Moratorium On Gulf Drilling Blocked

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the government from enforcing the six month drilling ban in the Gulf. The action was a result of a suit filed by Hornbeck Offshore Services, L.L.C., etal. The White House reported it would appeal the decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

A number of elected officials applauded the judge's decision to lift the drilling ban and some urged the President not to appeal the decision. The Times Picayune in its editorial of 6/23 said, The administration's determination to fight the preliminary injunction is disappointing. The same day another full page ad appeared in the TP by BP which has been ongoing.

Hopefully the President will follow through with his appeal and stay on the side of those 11 workers who were killed and the resulting hardships placed on their families. Those elected officials who continue to accept money from oil industry lobbyist during this sad time and continue to blame the President and federal government for the resulting fall out have no character. They continue to be the mouth piece for BP and the oil industry.

Those elected officials and the editors of the TP should be well aware that executives of BP and other oil companies recently testified before congress under oath and said they still did not know what caused the explosion, still don't not know how to timely cap such a blow out and still have no equipment available to timely remove any spilled oil from the waters of the Gulf. And in fact they had no model to test on.

The Times Picayune and elected officials who are against the moratorium should address their rhetoric to the people responsible for the spill to compensate any workers that were harmed. They should think more about the workers killed and their families, that it is over two months since the explosion and the oil industry still has no answers. Louisiana has let the oil industry off the hook with the damage they have done to the wet lands, coastal erosion and the environment and now that industry wants to cut and run with the threat to move their rigs over seas.

I wrote a previous post that when all is said and done with this spill it will be business as usual between the oil industry and elected officials. Money from lobbyist will continue to flow to elected officials and nothing will have been learned. I have seen nothing since the explosion that could lead me to change my mind. Hopefully President Obama will stand tall. He represents the people's last hope in this matter.