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Louisiana wants offshore drilling ban lifted

Barbbtx said:
When a plane crashes you don't shut down all the airlines while you investigate the cause. We don't shut down our school system when a bus is in an accident.
Obama is pandering to the far left and is going to totally ruin our economy. What he should be doing is tightening regulations. He should be insisting that all rigs have at least two relief wells instead of none. This would create tens of thousands of jobs instead of destroying jobs. This ban, if it lasts very long will cause these oil companies to pick up and leave, never to return. The need for oil is not going away anytime soon. I prefer we use our own and keep the money here and out of the hands of our enemies. Drill baby drill. Someones going to anyway. Why not us?
He is wasting this crisis. He should be using it to create jobs.
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I love this argument.... They will ground all of a particular class of airplane or an airline if an initial accident investigation suggests a design flaw or sloppy maintenance practices. We had sloppy approval practices that the MMS. It isn't unreasonable to stop all deep, off-shore drilling. No one is pandering to the far left or ruining the US economy. The suspension of offshore drilling has far, far, far less economic impact than had we not bailed out Detroit... so, hopefully, as a matter of consistency you are not making the economic impact argument here and were all against the Detroit bailout there....

That all said, a better approach would be an immediate and thorough government audit of all deep offshore drilling activities with a quick trigger on license suspensions for any significant violations.
 
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dontworrybehappy said:
I'm not saying anything about oil companies not needing to come up with some kind of plan. I'm saying that you don't shut everything down until they do. After all, the last airliner disaster which killed 4 times as many people as this did was caused by pilot error/incompetence. You didn't see the FAA shutting down all airlines until a plan of some sort was put in place to ensure that pilots don't screw up in the future. Why not?
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Of course airlines are not grounded for pilot error, as pilot error rests with the individual pilot... and the matter is not likely to repeat as, well, the matter took care of itself. The FAA, however, has and will ground airlines or particular models of airplanes, pending investigation, when faulty maintenance practices or design problems are found or suspected based upon the initial accident investigation.
 
apdst said:
Well, you're wrong, because the oil companies care more about the little folks than the government does.
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That's just twisted.... you actually think a foreign company cares about "the little people"? That just sounds wrong / naive to me.

I guess this is all an argument about which is the greater evil, big government or big business. Given that the nature of a company in a free enterprise system is to maximize revenue and minimize cost, whereas in minimizing costs in an unchecked environment it tends toward exploitation versus the government, which is comprised of elected officials whose job it is to serve their specific constituencies (though, if left unchecked it tends toward corruption), I think of government as a lesser evil than big business, simply because the check is more tangible.
 
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upsideguy said:
Of course airlines are not grounded for pilot error, as pilot error rests with the individual pilot... and the matter is not likely to repeat as, well, the matter took care of itself. The FAA, however, has and will ground airlines or particular models of airplanes, pending investigation, when faulty maintenance practices or design problems are found or suspected based upon the initial accident investigation.
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Well, that airliner had 2 pilots so it rested with both of them. And just like that crash, this blowout has to do ONLY with the individuals who were on the rig when it blew, not every single drilling company in the Gulf. The FAA takes YEARS to make a determination that a model of airplane is unsafe. No airplane model is grounded for a single accident, especially if that airplane had flown accident free for over 60 years prior, no matter how bad of a crash it was.

So using your own words, you can't justify what Obama did with the 6 month moratorium.
 
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From now on when ordering Gulf Coast shrimp get the 5-W20 the 10-W30 are tough to swallow and they give you that "bloated" feeling.
 
Aunt Spiker said:
No they don't. . . the oil companies don't give a flying **** about anyone - I think it's obviously, now. . . they only pretend to care when something happens and they lose money.
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You may have a point about whether, or not they, "care", about the little folks. However, they do alot better job at taking care of the little folks than the government does. The government only cares when votes are on the line. If I had to choose between a politician and a fat cat CEO, I'll take the fat cat CEO anyday. At least the CEO doesn't win anything by putting me out of work. If the politician puts me out of work, then he gets to look like the big hero when he gives me my welfare check and tell people about how compationate he is. Why do you think Obama has milked this oil slick like he has. Because he, "cares"? I'm not feellin' the love.

The government can't create jobs nor wealth. The oil companies can.
 
upsideguy said:
That's just twisted.... you actually think a foreign company cares about "the little people"? That just sounds wrong / naive to me.

I guess this is all an argument about which is the greater evil, big government or big business. Given that the nature of a company in a free enterprise system is to maximize revenue and minimize cost, whereas in minimizing costs in an unchecked environment it tends toward exploitation versus the government, which is comprised of elected officials whose job it is to serve their specific constituencies (though, if left unchecked it tends toward corruption), I think of government as a lesser evil than big business, simply because the check is more tangible.
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The government exists to protect the little folks, in some cases from big business. Who is going to protect the little folks from big government? When the president misuses his authority to shakedown a private company and put a half million people out of work, who do we complain to? The answer to that is, nobody.
 
Boo Radley said:
No, you didn't. And I for one think we should have. But if you think this compaining is going to hurt the president, it is nothing compared to what he'd have seen had he not helped the banks, and especially the auto industry, which would have had an even larger effect.

And stupidity is not limited to any one party. ;)
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If the oil and gas industry is shut down, the union bailouts will look like a lemonade stand getting blown over in a rains storm.
 
What I guess the left doesn't realize is how much royalty revenue the gov't recieves each year. If you shut down drilling, you're shooting yourself in the foot. For a gov't thats up to its upstairs neighbors eyeballs in debt eliminating one large source of revenue for yourself isn't the smartest idea in the world. Of course not much Obama has done could remotely be considered smart! LOL
 
apdst said:
You may have a point about whether, or not they, "care", about the little folks. However, they do alot better job at taking care of the little folks than the government does. The government only cares when votes are on the line. If I had to choose between a politician and a fat cat CEO, I'll take the fat cat CEO anyday. At least the CEO doesn't win anything by putting me out of work. If the politician puts me out of work, then he gets to look like the big hero when he gives me my welfare check and tell people about how compationate he is. Why do you think Obama has milked this oil slick like he has. Because he, "cares"? I'm not feellin' the love.

The government can't create jobs nor wealth. The oil companies can.
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This is true - it is not the purpose of the government to guarantee employment or your wealth, I agree with that.
That is the partial purpose of the business.

But don't forget that the bottom line for a business is to make PROFIT - and if you being there in some fashoin hinders PROFIT or if the company isn't making their desired net PROFITS - you wil go.
 
Aunt Spiker said:
This is true - it is not the purpose of the government to guarantee employment or your wealth, I agree with that.
That is the partial purpose of the business.

But don't forget that the bottom line for a business is to make PROFIT - and if you being there in some fashoin hinders PROFIT or if the company isn't making their desired net PROFITS - you wil go.
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This is true, although I've always been an employee that made the company money, rather than someone who just drew a paycheck every friday. I've always believed that, in the workplace, people make their own luck. In most cases, people get fired because they're not making the company money. And, in a healthy job market, when I get fired, I'll just go get another job. The same can't be said when the government kills the industry you work in; especially when they don't have the first damn clue what their going to do to replace those jobs.
 
apdst said:
If the oil and gas industry is shut down, the union bailouts will look like a lemonade stand getting blown over in a rains storm.
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And what will the consequences of another mistake be? All choices have consequences.
 
apdst said:
The government exists to protect the little folks, in some cases from big business. Who is going to protect the little folks from big government? When the president misuses his authority to shakedown a private company and put a half million people out of work, who do we complain to? The answer to that is, nobody.
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"Shakedown a private company" ... your joking, right?

There is a liability here of serious magnitude. If your country did nothing to protect the interests of the harmed party and BP later chose to file a Chapter XI, there would be outrage. (BTW, BP is contributing $20B over 4 years, so they still can hide behind an Chapter XI) They are going to owe a ton of money. Contrary to the idiocy of a Rush Limbaugh diatribe, this is actually an example of your government and BP doing the right thing. Guys like Limbaugh are paid to tell you your Democratic leaders do nothing right and everything wrong, but actually believing that serious politicians can't do anything right is intellectually dishonest.

You may not like the approach, but its no "shakedown". This was negotiated between the government and BP attorney's long before last week. BP is certainly capable of playing hardball had they chose.
 
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apdst said:
This is true, although I've always been an employee that made the company money, rather than someone who just drew a paycheck every friday. I've always believed that, in the workplace, people make their own luck. In most cases, people get fired because they're not making the company money. And, in a healthy job market, when I get fired, I'll just go get another job. The same can't be said when the government kills the industry you work in; especially when they don't have the first damn clue what their going to do to replace those jobs.
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Well - the destruction of a large, viable company can't be simple and easy to stage.

The auto-industry had it's own strong hand in slowly doing itself in. In my opinion it built itself TOO BIG to maintain. They had to push "sell sell sell" - as well as immoral money schemes, mind games and other such practices to convince or slide a person into purchasing a vehicle that they didn't need, couldn't afford - and so on. . . with little to no flashback danger.
Quality and dependability began to slip, as well - a lot of people took avid note of that.

It was their own stuffy attitude and slow decision to modernize and improve that lost their market to more affordable and better built imports.

The government also made it easier to shove their employment off to other countries - which furthered the downward spiral of poor quality and lackluster dependability. Right here someone might be tempted to say "and government kept making regulations more and more strict" - but to that I'd say that if they hadn't of already screwed theirselves over they would have been able to adapt. . . if they looked at it seriously then they could have ended up far better off.

So it was a hand-shake of an undoing - government played partial responsibility but the auto-industry set itself up for failure.

Since autos are one of the most expensive items to purchase - and go in debt for - it was inevitable that if we had a financial-crisis new purchases of new vehicles that weren't necessity would drop dramatically.

If a lot of companies who failed had actually centered around a better business-plan they would have survived.
 
Barbbtx said:
When a plane crashes you don't shut down all the airlines while you investigate the cause.
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Sure you do, when you discover that key aviation safety components that should have been installed and functional on every plane before leaving the factory were not.

:doh
 
Boo Radley said:
And what will the consequences of another mistake be? All choices have consequences.
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Well, it boils down to this:

We know that a drilling moratorium will put hundreds of thousands of people out of work.

The moratorium will cause the most talented people to leave the GOM, thereby creating a more dangerous working environment when the moratorium is finally lifted.

A start up of drilling right now might lead to another blowout.

Are the first two definates worth it?
 
upsideguy said:
"Shakedown a private company" ... your joking, right?

There is a liability here of serious magnitude. If your country did nothing to protect the interests of the harmed party and BP later chose to file a Chapter XI, there would be outrage. (BTW, BP is contributing $20B over 4 years, so they still can hide behind an Chapter XI) They are going to owe a ton of money. Contrary to the idiocy of a Rush Limbaugh diatribe, this is actually an example of your government and BP doing the right thing. Guys like Limbaugh are paid to tell you your Democratic leaders do nothing right and everything wrong, but actually believing that serious politicians can't do anything right is intellectually dishonest.

You may not like the approach, but its no "shakedown". This was negotiated between the government and BP attorney's long before last week. BP is certainly capable of playing hardball had they chose.
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By the same token, if the government keeps soaking BP for money that will go no telling where and BP files chapter 11, then where will we be?

My point is, if Obama can do it to BP, he can do it to anyone else.
 
apdst said:
Well, it boils down to this:

We know that a drilling moratorium will put hundreds of thousands of people out of work.

The moratorium will cause the most talented people to leave the GOM, thereby creating a more dangerous working environment when the moratorium is finally lifted.

A start up of drilling right now might lead to another blowout.

Are the first two definates worth it?
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And if we have another disaster, who will blame?
 
Boo Radley said:
And if we have another disaster, who will blame?
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Not drilling right now is a disaster.

As these columns reported last week, the opposite is true. In a scathing document, eight of the "experts" the Administration listed in its report said their names had been "used" to "justify" a "political decision." The draft they reviewed had not included a six-month drilling moratorium. The Administration added that provision only after it had secured sign-off. In their document, the eight forcefully rejected a moratorium, which they argued could prove more economically devastating than the oil spill itself and "counterproductive" to "safety."

And the report they agreed to did address moratoria: It recommended a six-month ban on new deepwater permits. Yet Benton Baugh, president of Radoil, said that in at least two separate hour-and-a-half phone calls among Interior and the experts, there was no discussion of a moratorium on existing drilling. "Because if anybody had [made that suggestion], we'd have said 'that's craziness.'"

A cynic might argue the ban was only added after review precisely because the Administration knew experts would refuse to endorse it.

A big reason why those experts would have balked is because they recognize that the moratorium is indeed a threat to safety. Mr. Arnold offers at least four reasons why.

The ban requires oil companies to abandon uncompleted wells. The process of discontinuing a well, and then later re-entering it, introduces unnecessary risk. He notes BP was in the process of abandoning its well when the blowout happened.

The ban is going to push drilling rigs to take jobs in other countries. "The ones that go first will be the newest, biggest, safest rigs, because they are most in demand. The ones that go last and come back first are the ones that aren't as modern," says Mr. Arnold.

The indeterminate nature of this ban will encourage experienced crew members to seek other lines of work—perhaps permanently. Restarting after a ban will bring with it a "greater mix of new people who will need to be trained." The BP event is already pointing, in part, to human error, and the risk of that will increase with a less experienced crew base. Finally, a ban will result in more oil being imported on tankers, which are "more likely" to spill oil than local production.

All this is even before raising ban's economic consequences, which already threaten tens of thousands of jobs. This is why Louisiana politicians are now pleading with the Administration to back off a ban that is sending the Gulf's biggest industry to its grave.

"Mr. President, you were looking for someone's butt to kick," said Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph, recently. "You're kicking ours." The sooner the Administration climbs down from this pointless exercise, the better for a Gulf that needs real help.
Crude Politics - WSJ.com
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Obama's folks played hide the baloney to make it appear experts agreed with the moratorium when they didn't.

This should be investigated and punishment administered where due.
These people are playing with a multi-billion dollar industry, and using lies and misrepresentation to achieve their goal.

Try doing the latter with the government, and see what happens.

.
 
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zimmer said:
Not drilling right now is a disaster.


.
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Drilling when they can not fix deep off shore oil leaks in a timely manner is a much larger disaster waiting to happen. Those jobs are not worth the risk.
 
jamesrage said:
Drilling when they can not fix deep off shore oil leaks in a timely manner is a much larger disaster waiting to happen. Those jobs are not worth the risk.
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James,

There have been hundred, or thousands of holes dilled without incident.
If we stop, 11 or more nations will continue in the same region.

I understand the reasons of the 8 experts whose recommendations were falsified.

They clearly explained why they shouldn't stop.

But respect your concern.

.
 
zimmer said:
Not drilling right now is a disaster.


Obama's folks played hide the baloney to make it appear experts agreed with the moratorium when they didn't.

This should be investigated and punishment administered where due.
These people are playing with a multi-billion dollar industry, and using lies and misrepresentation to achieve their goal.

Try doing the latter with the government, and see what happens.

.
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Counter productive to safety makes little sense. So, I'm not buying it completely. And of course politics plays a role. Again, I ask, if he didn't and something went wrong, what would you be saying?
 
Boo Radley said:
Counter productive to safety makes little sense. So, I'm not buying it completely. And of course politics plays a role. Again, I ask, if he didn't and something went wrong, what would you be saying?
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Then I'd really start asking questions because this has happened one time in 60 years. If it were to happen again within a year I'd start really wondering WTF was going on.

Flying is dangerous. You're riding in an aluminum contraption with thousands of horsepower under the wings doing hundreds of miles an hour many miles above the earths surface. But.....you can do it safely if you follow the procedures set forth.

Same with deep water drilling.
 
dontworrybehappy said:
Then I'd really start asking questions because this has happened one time in 60 years. If it were to happen again within a year I'd start really wondering WTF was going on.

Flying is dangerous. You're riding in an aluminum contraption with thousands of horsepower under the wings doing hundreds of miles an hour many miles above the earths surface. But.....you can do it safely if you follow the procedures set forth.

Same with deep water drilling.
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No matter how often it has happened, it wasn't suppose to happen this time, but did. And the consequences are actually greater for more people than flying.
 
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