Obama's Energy Plan: Drill Now, Pay Later
The White House has lifted its ban on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
The official line is that administration honchos are satisfied that they have toughened up safety regulations enough to warrant consideration of new drilling permits.
Maybe they have. Time will tell whether Interior has put an end to the what-me-worry laxness that allowed it to rubber-stamp, without batting an eye, cut-and-paste Gulf spill response plans that vowed to protect walruses looking for love in all the wrong places.
The unofficial line … well, we all know what the unofficial line is. Waiting until the moratorium’s previously scheduled expiration on November 30 would have meant that the story would still be moldering in the news cycles leading up to a certain event scheduled for November 2.
Practically speaking, what does the announcement mean? In the immediate future, not much. Interior’s officials have said that it might be several weeks before they start approving drilling permits.
The American Petroleum Institute has grumbled about “new technical requirements and third-party verification requirements and new equipment inspection requirements and new well-design requirements.”
The Interior Department, API frets, might be spending too much of its energy on safety and not enough on issuing permits. The nerve of those bureaucrats.
What hasn’t changed is that oil and gas are still being produced from 600 or so rigs in the Gulf’s deepwater. The employment apocalypse predicted by the offshore industry, Mary Landrieu and other members of the industry’s political auxiliary hasn’t taken place.
Regardless of how many and how fast deepwater drilling permits are issued, there is a fair chance that oil prices will creep upward in the coming year.
Global demand is up as a result of growth in developing countries. China and India are growing thirstier by the day. As fast as deepwater drills open new fields, old fields are declining. Industry observers are debating when demand will start outpacing supply again, a prelude to price spikes.
In other words, the risks of oil dependence will remain with us, long after the teeth gnashing over the deepwater drilling moratorium is forgotten.