Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Judge Blocks Obama's Moratorium on Deep-Water Oil Drilling, A.P. Reports

From the NY Times:

A federal judge in New Orleans issued an injunction against a
six-month moratorium on new deep-water oil and gas drilling
projects that was imposed by the Obama administration after
an explosion on a drilling rig led to a vast oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico, the Associated Press reported.

The White House said the administration would appeal the
ruling.

Ruling in favor of oilfield services companies whose business
suffered under the moratorium, District Judge Martin Feldman
said that the Interior Department failed to provide adequate
reasoning for the moratorium, and instead merely seemed to
assume that one rig failure meant all deep-water drilling
posed an imminent danger.

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/22/us/AP-US-Gulf-Oil-Spill.html?emc=na

UPDATE 4:41 PM

Frank Pallone issued the following statement about the court decision:

“This is a reckless decision that goes against both the president’s decision to enact a moratorium and the recommendations of the president’s bi-partisan commission to study the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. In the two months since the spill occurred, we have found neither a cause of the spill or a way to fix the leaking pipe. Given this, how can we possibly move forward with deepwater drilling? I’m emphatically opposed to any new offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico or anywhere off America’s coastline and support the administration’s decision to challenge this ruling.”


Anna Little responded with the following statement:

"As an attorney, Frank Pallone should know better than to call a federal judge's decision based on law reckless. Once again, Pallone and the Democrats in Washington have little regard for the constitution. There is legislation on the books that permits drilling. The moratorium may well be unconstitutional. The court has ruled that it is illegal.

The Obama administration's failure to take the spill seriously as soon as the explosion occurred was reckless. More egregiously, Frank Pallone and his colleagues on the House Energy and Commerce Committee as well as the Mineral and Mining Service failed to ensure there were proper safe guards in place before drilling occurred, and in the case of BP, they failed to take corrective action once serious problems were reported to them two months prior to the explosion that cause the current tragedy.

A drilling moratorium is devastating to the Gulf states economies and cost thousands of Americans their jobs. Before long, a moratorium would have a negative impact on our fragile economy in New Jersey as fuel prices will inevitably rise.

Frank Pallone and the Obama administration should stop playing politics with this disaster and start doing their jobs. Drilling should resume, but only under the safest conditions with the safety of each rig evaluated before it goes online.

All efforts to stop the ongoing spill and to contain the damage must go forward without delay."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

hope that poor judge has all his taxes paid and is permanent in his job.. these people are the most horrific and vindictive against any form of criticism , questioning, or accountability issues I've ever seen: either pump them up,give them votes or money, or spew their lies, or ELSE!!.. this is an autocracy/dictatorship the likes of which we've never encountered.. they must be stopped before all our liberty is GONE!

Unknown said...

That was a logical decision.

Also, if Obama bans all commercial flights for 6 months as a result of some plane crash, I hope a judge will block that too.

How dare they?? said...

update: now they're defying this judge and issuing yet a new order!!.. the arrogance of these people and the nerve of just ramming their ways through no matter what, is appalling and MUST be stopped..

Anonymous said...

it's a good thing Obama wasn't president during Katrina. Can you imagine if all weather was banned for six months?

Unknown said...

Frank references a bi-partisan commission? Oh Really? Who? When?
Possibly it was Marxist and Socialist Czar's. Is that his idea of bi-partisan? The only thing Bi-Partisan in DC is opposition to ObamaCare and by extension, PalloneCare.