Lifting of oil ban overreaches, as does ban itself

Ann Woolner

06/26/2010

So President Barack Obama overdid it by slapping a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. He acted more on fear of another Deepwater Horizon explosion than on solid, articulated grounds another would occur.
The already suffering Gulf Coast economy stands to take another hit if the drilling moves out.
To lift the ban now, the law says U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman had to find that the moratorium would likely be eventually ruled arbitrary and capricious, not in the public interest, more irreparably damaging than no moratorium.
That is what he did in his 22-page order last week, barely a day after hearing arguments in his New Orleans courtroom.
What bothers me is that he did it with such relish.
I agree the administration should have used a smarter, more targeted approach to ensuring safety with a more limited economic impact.
I like the idea of Louisiana’s attorney general and Gov. Bobby Jindal. Spend the next month reinspecting each of the 33 rigs, certifying equipment, training personnel and bringing the operations into compliance with new precautions. Then, station an inspector on each rig around the clock.
But that’s a policy decision, not a legal one. Feldman was only supposed to say whether the ban violated the law. Like Obama, he overreached.
“The blanket moratorium,” Feldman wrote, “seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells more than 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.”
No, it doesn’t assume that. It’s precisely because no one knows why the Deepwater Horizon exploded that the administration fears there might be trouble on some other as yet unidentified rig.
The point is to stop all such drilling to make sure it’s safe, given the horrific consequences of another such disaster.
There are also indications that drilling deeper into the ocean floor puts dangerous strain on equipment, or makes regulations written for less risky operations insufficient.
Studies found critical safety equipment failing at times when tested under the higher pressure of the sort found in deepwater drilling.
Feldman essentially ridiculed that finding.
Feldman also gives little weight to the public’s interest in avoiding another explosion. The loss of 11 lives and the economic and ecological devastation now unfolding get scant mention.
Nor does he attempt to quantify the economic harm he finds irreparable. He points out that the oil industry service companies that sued to lift the moratorium employ almost 12,000 people. He says 150,000 people work in jobs directly related to the industry.
But the moratorium threatens few of those jobs. It applies only to 33 rigs out of the 3,600 in the Gulf.
Still, as a policy matter, the moratorium is overkill.
With a more narrowly tailored moratorium, such as experts recommended, even less economic damage would have resulted. &#8226