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Interior Secretary Salazar lies about drilling peer review.

I'm not affiliated with this administration: I don't have to use the weasel term 'misrepresented.'

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  June 12th, 2010 at 01:47 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Basically, what happened was that Salazar added language to a report on the Gulf oil spill, and that said language called for a drilling moratorium.  That’s not the lie: the Interior Secretary is allowed to make his own recommendations, even when they’re dunderheaded recommendations.  No, this is the lie:

Salazar’s report to Obama said a panel of seven experts “peer reviewed” his recommendations, which included a six-month moratorium on permits for new wells being drilled using floating rigs and an immediate halt to drilling operations.

“None of us actually reviewed the memorandum as it is in the report,” oil expert Ken Arnold told Fox News. “What was in the report at the time it was reviewed was quite a bit different in its impact to what there is now. So we wanted to distance ourselves from that recommendation.”

Via Power Line and Instapundit: the exact lie is:

The recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.

…and ‘recommendations’ very much includes everything in that report that’s explicitly said as coming from the Secretary; and the experts (all petroleum engineers) are explicitly disavowing that.  Not to be impolite about this, but Salazar is a politician, not an engineer, which is why this is a big deal: a moratorium on drilling is clearly a political decision, not a technical one – and while taking political considerations into account when making a technical decision can be acceptable, masking a political decision as a technical decision is not.  Salazar probably thought that this would be not noticed; and probably twenty years ago it wouldn’t have been, at least to the extent that it has so far.  Then again, twenty years ago we didn’t have PDFs, and barely had an Internet.

Normally, I’d call for Ken Salazar’s metaphorical head at this point, but judging from this report: even if they decided to listen to me the White House would probably just mess up and fire Larry Echo Hawk instead.  These people would do better if they just started relying on a Magic 8-Ball.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://charlemagne-the-hammer.blogspot.com/ DerKrieger

    …is blowing up in Teh One’s face. To satisfy the eco-Marxist wing of the party and the socialists within his administration as well as appear to be “doing something” Obama is about to be the cause of massive unemployment in LA. Even union Dems will be out of work. He’s going to piss off a lot more people than he makes happy with this ignorant move. How will he be able to recover?

    And I am desperate for someone, perhaps Dick Cheney, to ask the eco-Marxists a simple question; if we shut down oil production in the US how does that reduce our dependence on foreign oil? If we’re to reduce our dependence on foreign oil without drilling for more of our own, what’s their recommended alternative given the fact that there are over 100,000,000 gasoline burning vehicles on the road, tens of thousands of service stations, thousands of miles of pipelines, and hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure dedicated to gasoline as a transportation fuel. I’m sick to death of them griping about oil without being forced to offer an alternative and a strategy for implementation. Offer an alternative or SHUT UP.

  • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

    These guys are at the top of their game and not to be trifled with.

    It is a shame, and a mistake, for their professional judgment to be ignored and their involvement limited to giving cover to the single most disastrous political judgment in memory.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    The media can sit on their hands, but if this catches fire, Salazar is gone.

  • NoDoze

    Everyone seems to assume that the subject oil is all about motor fuels, but that is far from the case. If we greatly reduce, or eliminate oil from our nation, where will we get the plastics, synthetic rubber, lubricants, asphalt, and a host of other products that are made of crude oil? Are there alternative sources for these things? If we stop burning gasoline and diesel fuel, what will we do with it when we process the crude for the other products — flush it down the drain?

  • janis

    then this moratorium fits nicely into their plan to determine the limits of our physical freedom. Limited supply of oil means limited supply of gasoline which translates into much higher prices at the pump, which means that we are virtually trapped wherever we live unless we have piles of money lying around. And THAT demographic gets smaller by the day.

    Of course government workers, compliant unions, and favored groups will be taken care of. What they don’t take into account is that we have been pushed about as far as we can be pushed without open revolt. Nothing about this action is going to go as they envision. That’s if they even have thought this out….

  • Bill

    the House could impeach Salazar and the Senate could hold a trial on his competency. The same for Holder, Napolatono, Lisa Jackson, the Secretary of Labor, etc. At the same time start a close scrutiny of the so called czars. Defund the EPA and let us see what can be done next!

  • Achance
  • Scope

    on another post, I’ve learned the hard way to not challenge the old timers, in any negative way. They are a protected species. I want no arguments, but, honest debates should be had. It is healthy for everyone.

    There seems to be a pattern to your posts, particularly of late. They seem to be all negative. No matter who posts positive ideas, to negate this out of control government, you seem to want to take the wind out of their sails. I realize that you worked in state government for many years, and that you have had a birdseye view of the machinations, but, are you that hardened, and cynical to all politicians, from either party, that the country has no chance of moving beyond government corruption? It sounds like you believe that every elected official will be corrupt, end of story.

    I noticed that you haven’t come out in support of any candidate that is out there, no matter who they are. Do you really think they are all bad, or will be bad once they get to Washington? If I had to go to sleep at night, believing that everyone and everything that goes to DC is bad, I would sleep even less than I do now, worrying about what is happening in this country. You make me feel that the country is gone forever, get over it, it’s a done deal. I personally can’t adopt that philosophy. I have to believe that this can be turned around, even if it means bloodshed. I hope it doesn’t come to that. You add so much to the discussion when it comes to unions, your expertise, but, your negatives against almost everything is depressing. I’m not naieve, I believe that success begets success, and it will happen sooner rather than later. The Democrats have been working on a campaign of negatives, and have been spouting about just how bad this country is, they need to change it. It seems that you are trying to help them.

  • Achance

    are the worst possible thing for us to trade in these days. It is realistic to expect that we may, just may, get one body of the Congress back in November. Getting one body and scaring Hell out of wavering Democrats and the Emanuel-recruited Democrats that out-Republicaned the Republicans will take away some of Comrade Obama’s impetus, but it will not stop him and his handlers. He will have the whole power of the Executive Branch to turn on recalcitrant Red states, and we should all know by now that he won’t hesitate to do so.

    Assume we do take the House. Any impeachment exercise is simply foolish unless you have 60 votes in the Senate and we don’t; didn’t when we had a majority and tried it before. We will NOT have 60 votes in the Senate, so impeachment talk is crazy talk. IF we have the house, we can control the budget and use it to hold senators hostage to stop the worst of the Obama excesses; that is the most we can REALISTICALLY hope for.

    The emphasis on the federal is necesary but over-emphasis is foolish. The real battle ground is in the states; I said that right after the election. Now it should be graphically evident what a malevolent federal government can do to states that don’t vote right. Withhold the berm permits. Withhold the Jones Act exemptions. Take forever to get the booms on site. Use the whole exercise as a way to try to force BP to spin off its US operations so that they can be forced into bankruptcy and nationalized. By the way, that would not only bring all Alaskan production under federal control but also result in the unionization of the largely non-union Alaska oil workforce. After that, in the next election, Alaska would once again be a union controlled bluer than blue state.

    The Gold Prize in ’10 is the ’12 reapportionment, and we need Republican governors and legislators. When I hear all the crazy talk about some portending triumph that I know isn’t going to happen, I know what is going to happen to all the new Tea Party types and others who have found a new interest in politics; they’ll be brutally disappointed and they will go home and watch Idol. So, it is crazy to talk about anything more than realistically attainable goals in ’10 and to set measured expectations to avoid a huge loss based on irrational expectations.

  • taxmaiden

    Exactly! We can only “hope for change” in November. It can’t come soon enough!

  • http://www.scragged.com petrarch

    “The real battle ground is in the states.” Exactly. The way to stop Obama is at state level.

    Ordinary voters have a hard time following arcane parliamentary maneuvers in Congress. But they would understand perfectly the visuals of Obama sending federal marshals to arrest Gov. Jindal because the Governor ordered that the berms be built without a permit; the blowback would be awe-inspiring. Nothing against Jindal, but we need governors who are willing to actively take back the state sovereignty that is rightfully theirs, and then let Obama worry about trying to stop them. Especially on issues that are simple and crystal-clear for normal folks to understand.

  • pegworth

    Who does he report directly to? Somebody important should make a big stink about this. What is it, 45,000 he has put out of work & BP cannot be paying the salaries of these people because of his stupid, but purposely putting this many of people out of work. Then we run the risk of the owners of the oil rigs going to another country & leaving us without our 1/3 of our own oil supply.
    I am sure he is probably a Progressive, also, & a cap & trade guy who makes money enough to buy one of those little electric coffins to drive around. But it takes gas to drive those Limos & fly Air Force 1. You cannot email anyone in the Obama administration without going through the White House can you?