U.S. Saw Drill Ban Killing Many Jobs [ie. Obama KNEW he was destroying jobs, kept it secret]
WSJ ^ | AUGUST 21, 2010 | STEPHEN POWER And LESLIE EATON
Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs and freeze up to $10.2 billion in oil-industry investment, according to previously undisclosed documents detailing their internal debates.
Marcia McNutt, an Obama administration science adviser, commented on the corporate culture of BP in a memo sent to Michael Bromwich, the administration's new top offshore oil exploration regulator, on June 28.
Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region's economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects.
After his action, the documents show, administration officials considered alternatives but chose to impose a new drilling moratorium after concluding the industry lacked viable strategies for containing another major spill. Officials also expressed doubts internally about the reliability of the equipment the industry uses to prevent blowouts.
The administration hadn't previously disclosed its estimates of the economic effect of the controversial halt, ordered after the April explosion at a Gulf of Mexico well. The documents doing so were filed in a New Orleans federal court by the Justice Department earlier this week as part of the latest round of litigation over the moratorium.
Spanning more than 27,000 pages, they provide an unusually detailed look at deliberations about how to respond to the legal and political opposition to the moratorium...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
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Summer of Recovery.
