The nation is being run by looters and vandals:
As more and more startling facts emerge we are finding almost criminal ineptness by Washington compounded by BP’s almost criminal negligence. As with many crises, Washington’s reactions cause greater damage than the event itself. Yet lurking in the mess are the extreme environmentalists staffing the Obama Administration with their declared agenda of shutting down all offshore oil drilling. The Sierra Club has bragged about how it helped shut down all new coal generating electricity plants. Other environmentalists are still happy that the Three Mile Island crisis succeeded in ending all new nuclear-generating power plants. Preventing new offshore oil drilling in Alaska is another of their primary objectives.
Now CNN reports that almost all new drilling activity has been suspended for over two months. This includes shallow wells in less than 500 feet of water—despite Obama’s statement that such wells would not be affected by his orders to cease all deep-water (over 1,000 feet) drilling. After thousands of deep-water wells have been drilled successfully without spills, the Interior Department, under Secretary Ken Salazar, has so delayed permitting and continuing operations as to possibly bring financial ruin to countless smaller companies. It would be similar to shutting down all airlines after a single crash. It may be that Salazar and his gang are just so ignorant of business that they think the government can simply shut down the super-sophisticated flow of supplies and men and then later restart it like flipping an electric light switch. It’s already estimated that it will take two years or longer to get Gulf production back to its pre-suspension levels. Meanwhile, deep-water drilling rigs—which cost over half a million dollars per day to operate—are being sent away from the Gulf to work in Africa and Asia where they are wanted. It will take months, if not years, to bring them back. Some 100,000 high-paying jobs are now at risk. Already the number of deep-water rigs has dropped from 42 to 19.
But they’ll blame “deregulation.” And George Bush.
Where do you get the idea that it’s as few as 100,000 jobs at risk?
If you take the money generated by the production in the Gulf of Mexico on an annual basis, work out that most of that is salary one way or another, assume it takes one trip through people’s hands, and that’s it…
I don’t remember the exact number I got when I did it, or what number I used for the price of oil, or the production… but it worked out to 500,000 or so jobs. I’m probably overestimating the costs, but underestimating the multiplier effects, after all that 500,000 use their salary to buy groceries (which winds up paying other people), pay taxes (which pays for the salaries of the local librarians and schoolteachers, among _many_ other people)… you’re looking at a potential domino effect where the only people left employed in the state are a couple of soybean farmers up near Alexandria. Then their farm gets declared a wetland and _everything_ is over.
Obama’s to do list:
Destroy American economy… check.
Make people jobless and then govt. dependents… check.
Create more crisis for govt. to fix… in process.
Ken, You forgot one. “Sell America to the highest offshore bidder”
It would be similar to shutting down all airlines after a single crash.
Didn’t the bushes close all airlines after 4 crashes?
That’s incredibly stupid even for you, Jack
I was reluctant to criticize BP for some time because I didn’t really understand the nature of the problem, not being an engineer. Then I watched a documentary in which one of the crisis team trying to shut off the blowout said “We’re trying things that have never been done at this depth!”
And I said, why? They’re drilling at a depth below the range of any manned submersibles, and nobody seems to have wondered how a blowout at that depth might be different from one at, say, 100 feet. The federal agencies seem to be more concerned with turf than with actual cleaning up any oil.
If this doesn’t convince us that expecting the government to solve anything is a pipe dream, there’s really no hope for us.
Jimmy Buffett just blamed the BP spill on Bush. Stupid has no shame.
George Bush blew up the oil rig cuz he hates black people!
It’s not just the deepwater drilling rigs that have been shut down, it is all of them. The vehicle is permitting – and there have not been any drilling or rework permits approved since the moratorium went into place.
And for Black Helo / Tinfoil hat fans: there is a Soros connection here. For if offshore drilling has been completely shut down int he US – for whatever reason – then some (or many) of the rigs can go to deepwater drilling offshore Brazil. Interestingly enough, Soros has a $900 million stake in getting that field developed. And what better payback could be than shutting down the competition in the Gulf completely?