Following the oil spill in the Gulf, the White House enacted a moratorium on new drilling, while Congress and the Department of Interior proposed new rules and regulations on safety. In a move to protect both oil and gas, and purportedly jobs in the Gulf, interested parties responded with a howl of disapproval.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, no enemy to oil industry executives, sent the White House a letter complaining that the moratorium could cost his state up to 16,000 jobs. "The last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands more," he said.
Bruce Vincent, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, voiced concern over a “domino effect” of newly proposed regulations which threatened to cut jobs, oil production and industry profits.
Well, if the concern is really about jobs, then everyone should be celebrating.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) said yesterday that oil and gas companies must permanently plug Gulf of Mexico wells that have sat idle for five years or more, a move that could create work for Gulf residents who lost jobs from the deepwater-drilling moratorium. BOEMRE estimates that would require companies to set permanent plugs in nearly 3,500 nonproducing wells and to dismantle about 650 platforms not being used for exploration or production.
The agency's clarification to industry comes on the heels of pressure applied by Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. Last month, he sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar calling on the government to enforce existing regulations on abandoned oil platforms, called "idle iron," in order to create jobs in the Gulf.
"These structures are not producing resources or creating jobs by just sitting there," Grijalva said, after learning of yesterday's notice. "This announcement should put thousands of laborers back to work in short order cleaning up the Gulf."
-- Paul Thacker
See also: No One Paying Attention to 27,000 Abandoned Oil Rigs in the Gulf
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