While it would be unfair to blame the Obama administration for BP’s string of mistakes that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, a second looming catastrophe would be entirely of the president’s making and ought to be reconsidered.
One of the unfortunate victims of the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be the erstwhile pragmatism of Ken Salazar. The Interior secretary is now aiding the president, who, while looking for someone’s ass to kick, is trying to penalize the industry in two ways that defy good judgment.
It’s natural to want to seek revenge for the massive environmental and economic havoc. But the administration is hurting the entire deepwater drilling industry by declaring a wide-ranging moratorium that experts say is killing more than 26,000 jobs and as much as $330 million a month in direct wages.
The administration also bizarrely says it expects BP to pay for these lost wages.
Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu asked Salazar in a congressional hearing if the result of the drilling moratorium means “the oil-services companies have to either go out of business or take bankruptcy or lay off classes of workers, [and] are you going to ask BP to pick up their salaries?” Salazar said: “The answer to that is yes, we will.”
Yet legal experts questioned by The Wall Street Journal expressed dismay that the government could make such a claim. After all, BP didn’t call for the moratorium, and does not have the authority to do so.
Meanwhile, a panel of experts is furious at Salazar for misrepresenting their review of a report on deepwater drilling guidelines that Salazar requested, which enabled the moratorium. Seven panelists from the National Academy of Engineering bridled at the suggestion from Salazar that they approved of an all-out drilling ban for six months. In a letter, they wrote that Salazar “should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions.”
Further, such a full-blown ban would not reduce the risk of another leak and would threaten the country’s shaky economic recovery, the engineers warned.
Salazar spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff tells us that he did not mean to imply that the engineers supported a full ban. The administration says it hopes a commission it formed to study whether drilling can continue can complete its work in less than the six months it has allotted.
Yet it’s not been our experience that government commissions work speedily. And economists warn that a months-long moratorium could persuade drillers to head for other waters, such as off the coasts of Africa. If they did so, no one should expect their immediate return.
The Deepwater Horizon crisis is large enough to be truly dangerous on its own. Playing politics to appear tough, when what’s really needed are clear-headed solutions to the problems at hand, is as inexcusable and reckless as it is foolish.
