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Obama’s Damage to Louisiana Will Easily Top BP’s

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  May 31st, 2010 at 10:47 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

In one of the bigger ‘duh!’ headlines of the year, the Times-Picayune observes:

Offshore drilling ban could be a blow to Louisiana economy

The president and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s announcement late last week to halt all deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico “at the first safe stopping point” while the Interior Department figures out what regulatory changes are necessary for offshore oil prospecting seemed designed to reassure the nation that drilling would only proceed in a safe and environmentally sensitive manner.

But to those who work in the offshore industry and in the communities at the epicenter of the spiraling disaster from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and oil leak, it smacked of a lack of understanding of the role that the oil business plays in the Louisiana economy.

In the 2008 presidential election, no coastal parishes except for Orleans supported Obama; last week’s offshore drilling announcement only seemed to make his administration even less popular in the oil-affected parishes.

Then again, maybe this is payback, Chicago-style.

Within a very short time, [LA Economic Development Secretary Stephen] Moret believes the state will lose 3,000 to 6,000 direct and indirect jobs.

If the suspensions are maintained, it could rise to 10,000 jobs. And if the moratorium persists while oil prices rise, the state could lose 20,000 jobs over the next 12 to 18 months in the form of lost direct and indirect jobs, and missed job creation opportunities because rising petroleum prices stimulate more energy development.

Since it’s unclear what’s involved with the shut-downs, it’s unclear whether companies will keep their rigs afloat in the Gulf with a skeleton crew or move them to Brazil, which is considered one of the world’s biggest deepwater drilling opportunities.

I think Mr. Moret is low-balling his estimate.

2012 cannot come soon enough.

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  • JamesSmith130

    Non-black voters in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama gave McCain nearly 90% of the vote. Since Obama thinks he has black voters in his pocket, and he has no chance to win these states, Obama is just flipping the bird to these three states, which are the ones most affected by the oil spill.

    But expect Obama to do whatever he can to help out Florida.

    • http://itsaboutfreedom.proboards.com Conservative Phantom

      …except this is intentional. Contrary to the MSM opinion journalism and the non-stop demagoguery of Democrat politicians, Katrina was not caused by GWB nor made substantially worse by him either. There were even ridiculous non-sensical claims that Cheney had personally set the explosive charges and pushed the plunger on the detonator that blew the holes in the levees.

      This, on the other hand, is very definitely going to be a man-child caused disaster. Totally unnecessary, totally preventable and obvious to all but the hopelessly obtuse. It will wreak havoc on Louisiana’s local economy but worse, will begin the push toward serious inflation for the national economy when gasoline prices get very ugly.

      BTW…has anyone begun to notice Obama ’08 bumper stickers beginning to vanish from cars?

  • cactusjack

    Sorry to be so simplistic in a response to your Post, Vlad, but IMOthat is exactly what it is with this current crew in the White House. If the US offshore industry was based in Chicago, TARP funds would be on the way to help. But since we’re talking about LA, TX, MS, AL and FL, all those red or leaning-red states & all with at least nominally Republican governors, it is a chance for a big hit on some electoral enemies. If anyone naively thinks they don’t – or can’t -think this way (“we’re all Americans aren’t we?”) they’re just wrong. The handwriting was on the wall months ago when NASAs manned space program was gutted (TX), Nashville was allowed to go under water (TN), and now LA , MS and AL are standing alone watching the black tide roll at their barrier islands. Never mind thismay result in pushing unemployment above 10% and reduce oil production just when the world is getting ready to go crazy and we need every drop. Unbelievable.

  • throwback59

    decision to halt deep water drilling, it will have the same effect that stopping nuclear power had after Three Mile Island.

    • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

      btw whatever happened to the calls for new nuclear plants after the O was elected?

      The O doesn’t have to be evil to hurt the US… sheer incompetence can do the trick as well…

      • Common_Cents

        This president is no bumbling rookie. He’s had decades of prep for doing what he is doing now.

        I wish he was merely incompetent like Biden. At least Biden is a known quantity and occasionally gaffes the truth.

        • Scope

          You say the O has had decades of prep to destroy the country, one industry at a time, but, he has bumbled the message. He said and did nothing for weeks after the accident, and now the WH talking point to be repeated by all of them is “day one.” Carol Browner repeated it again this past weekend. The longer it takes to get the spill stopped, the worse the O and his goons look. How can he keep bashing BP, and keep saying they weren’t doing enough, and in the same sentence say he and his admin. have been “leading” the effort since the beginning. When Salazar said they were going to push BP aside and take over, even Thad Allen asked who he planned on replacing the BP people with. Because there was so much flak about the O’s lack of participation, and refusing to take a leadership position with respect to the disaster, he and his admin. are trying to make it appear that they are the Sheriff in town, and have been in charge, they therefore are the ones seen to be incompetent.

          The O has no place in telling BP, and all the experts what they can and cannot do to stop the spill. What the O did have responsibility to do was to get as many people as possible to the shorelines to stop the oil from hitting the beaches, marshes, wildlife and etc. They had a month to put some plan in place for protecting the environment as much as possible. It is clear that the EPA really doesn’t have concerns for the environment, it is more important for them to kill the oil industry completely.

          The economy and jobs will be the issues driving the 2010 elections, barring some sort of man caused disaster. Shutting down the oil industry, and putting many thousands of people out of jobs will drive the unemployment rate sky high. The Census workers will all be back on the unemployment roles also. That will never help the O loving Dims in November. The only way to true change in this country will be through veto proof super majorities in both houses over the next 2 years.

          • Achance

            labor and environmental enforcement that the Gulf States, that would be the REPUBLICAN Gulf States, have. Just push aside that good ole boy system in the oil patch in LA and TX and put those competent federal bureaucrats in charge of everything.

            Most people don’t realize that most labor law and environmental law enforcement in the states is done as a part of grants and cooperative agreements with the federal government. If the fed says you aren’t doing it anymore, there’s not much you can do about it except bring out the welcome wagon for a whole bunch of new federal employees in your state. LA and TX may be about to get a lesson in what it is like to live in the West with the imperial federal government as your closest neighbor.

      • myungbluth

        Obama DID call for more emphasis on nuclear power – you must have been sleeping when that news was on. BTW many liberals didn’t like that – shame you missed it.
        Yeah, if only we could get back to the sheer “competence” we had under Bush/Cheney. Still, I wonder what old Dicky C. discussed behind the closed doors with all his big oil pals way back when. Do ya think they tried to loosen regulations and give sweetheart deals to big oil corporations? Nyah! Of course not!

        • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

          And this, folks, is what projection looks like.

          Ta.

  • nvrepub

    nt

    • izoneguy

      to any blue state.
      We need to “stock up” and let them learn to ride bikes to work.

      • libertyshrugged

        Shutdown refineries and coal mines to perform “maintenance, regulatory and safety compliance”. In a few weeks, gas and electric prices will “necessarily skyrocket” to levels never seen before. Public will finally understand why Dimocrat thinking is the last thing we need.

      • Achance

        “Let the Bastards Freeze in the Dark” bumper stickers have been available in Alaska since the ’70s. The Alaska government has various was to greatly reduce or even cease North Slope oil production. It has been a tempting prospect several times as our neighbors on the Left Coast interfere with our State. Alaska doesn’t produce enough oil anymore to dramatically spike National oil/fuel prices, but a shutdown would definitely felt in your wallet anywhere in the Country, but on the Left Coast, at least temporarily, the effect would be dramatic. OK, that’s a plan as far as it goes.

        For most of its history, Alaska couldn’t afford to do it, and production halts due to accidents, maintenance, etc. were really felt by the State. For the last several years, Alaska has had enough funds in reserves other than the Permanent Fund that it could live without oil revenue for awhile. It could go several years off the Permanent Fund but that would require an explicit vote of the People.

        However, the calculus is, if we were to force them to do without oil, they could very quickly force us to do without pretty much everything. You want to see hoarding? Just let rumors of a dock strike on the Left Coast start circulating and you’ll see everyone in Alaska running to the grocery store – and the gas station in the coasalt areas that rely on fuel refined Outside.

        So, I expect that the Gulf States could expect immediate retaliation from the effected states and from the federal government. While they can’t literally starve the Gulf States like the Left Coast could starve Alaska, they could surely do dire things to your economy. And with an unfriendly federal government, all they need to do is send a few auditors and investigators and start perp walking your government’s officials and freezing your federal funds.

    • redtillimdead

      You think our absentee Senator (mary landrieu) is really gonna stand up to Obama? HA! I sure hope the recall effort works out against her, we need a senator who will stand with Jindal, Vitter, and all the congressmen. I have hardly seen or heard from her since the spill happened. I see Vitter all the time.

      • JamesSmith130

        is planning on running again? Her votes suggest that this is her last term, and recalls are probably not going to work for federal offices.

  • crosley

    Even though you couldn’t have scripted a more perfect way to end offshore drilling in this country, the public will once again clamor for the US to open up drilling once energy prices are on the rise.

    I really don’t see oil prices going anywhere but up over the next few years. I easily see prices topping the record high prices in 2008.

    There will no doubt be more oversight (as there should be) for offshore drilling, but when people are spending a $100 a week on gas to get to work, the environmental extremists that will exploit this tragedy are going to be thrown overboard.

    • cactusjack

      Thanks Crosley, as I recall, in the summer 2008 as gas went the direction of $4/gal we did start seeing Drill Here Drill Now bumperstickers, public opinion swung strongly in favor of more domestic drilling (inc. ANWR) and the environmentalist lobbyists in DC were packing their green suitcases and burning important papers. Fate handed the football to McCain…and his campaign punted. Not this time, if it gets to that.

      • acat

        Near Chicago. Just paid $3.00.

        The only thing I think is holding gas down now is lower demand for oil worldwide – if any of the refineries in the U.S. go offline for any reason, $5.00 is easily possible.

        I also think $5.00 is an “emotional” number – it’s no longer “a couple bucks”.. and I expect a lot more folk will be walking and cycling.

        Mew

        • Richard Mullins

          So the North Harris County avg. of $2.59 or lower isn’t bad. Not as low as last year but still good. Chicago is more an exception to me and not the rule.

          • acat

            Chicago has several refineries – oil comes up from your end via pipeline, gets refined here, and then trucked or piped to the stations. It beats piping or trucking gasoline up from the gulf, I suppose.

            Illinois isn’t so much an “exception” as an example of a fragile system – the refineries can’t add capacity easily – long lead time to deal with the various state and federal agencies – and they end up running at or near 100% capacity. If we lose a refinery, for whatever reason, prices jump.

            Not sure whether we’ll lose one, of course, but if we do, or if any of a handful of other choke-points in the brittle system get gremlin’d this year, I’m expecting $5.00 gas.

            Mew

          • Achance

            so there might not be enough of the “right” kind of fuel at a given time in that region.

          • acat

            Mew

          • Richard Mullins

            but at much lower quantities than the stuff for Local Use(for the most part it will work in most of the State except maybe El Paso). Those boutique blends are toxic and I think that the EPA wants to kill Refinery Workers off with all this junk. Dang benzine shouldn’t be in your Gas Tank and as such shouldn’t have to be used in Refineries. Killing the EPA will solve lots of problems.

  • ithos

    http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20100508/ARTICLES/100509338

    Two of the top twenty counties in the USA for debt stress are in LA. And it isn’t because of the seafood and tourism industries.

  • abeldred

    the word impeachment keeps coming to mind. Or perhaps charges for say, treason?

    BHO and his evil co-horts will destroy America before 2012 gets here and undoing the damage may not ever be possible. I hate to be so pessimistic, but every day it is something else that will destroy the economy, rob us of our freedoms, shut us up and take from us all we hold dear. We cannot wait.

    • baserunr

      is that we wind up with President Biden. So we go from nefarious and grossly incompetent to just clueless and grossly incompetent.

      Come to think of it, maybe that is an improvement…..

      • acat

        Let’s see what happens after that.

        After all, impeachment was so effective in the Clinton case…

        Mew

  • Tbone

    Screw the Feds.

    • redtillimdead

      He said it for a different issue, the barrier islands, but, same message!

    • larueladue

      Send in the Coast Guard armed to shutdown their operations? That is a line I don’t think even this administration would cross…

      • Achance

        and perp walk the CEO on National television. That sort of thing tends to make corporations lose their ardor for civil disobedience.

        And if you’ve never dealt with them; the Coast Guard is not reticent about showing force. Until they got the message that we were serious, running gun “battles” between CG cutters and foreign fishing boats in the North Pacific were commonplace. Today, if you get anywhere near a cruise ship in your pleasure boat, a CG fast boat is coming at you at 50 mph+ and a 19 year old has a machine gun trained on you and your family; takes a little getting used to.

      • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

        Plus what achance said.

        • larueladue

          Guess I misread what they might do to enforce an executive order… and a crippling one at that.

          I just thought that they might take into account the damage this will do to the economy and the outrage that would occur in the country as a consequence. Don’t know what I was thinking…..

  • http://truthupfront.blogspot.com jsanzone

    …the spill and the economic detriment are both pretty awful.

    • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

      Measured in terms of dollars, the Louisiana seafood industry is probably a single-digit percentage of the oil and gas industry.

      The oil in the marsh may be ugly, but you’ll be hard pressed to find any evidence of it six months from now. Three years from now there will be no trace.

      And the deepwater rigs and jobs may be gone for good.

      That makes me uneasy.

  • Adjoran

    He is targeting ALL the energy resources of America. Louisiana just happens to host much of the affected activity.

    Like the man said, “Elections matter.”

    Fortunately, we do have one coming up.

  • Return to Revolution
    • NeoKong

      5555

  • wilfranc

    I’m sure it is nothing personal (unlike the president’s criticism of his own job), but the “hard” things he has to do to get us to abandon our SUVs and turn thermostats down in the winter.

    He is an average, ordinary man with streaks of laziness and narcissism who cannot rise to the level of response demanded of the situation. There would be nothing better for him to do to convince unbelievers of his ability to make nature obey his command than to have plugged the hole last week.

    He is currently superman without his cape, and by November may be missing the stretchy suit too.

    • larueladue

      We don’t need to “abandon our SUVs and turn thoermostats down in the winter”. We need to develop our own local natural resources fully, stop artificially strangling ourselves with “green/environmental” over-regulation, and stop propping up hostile, Middle Eastern satrapies.

      We have the natural resources to supply ourselves with energy. We just need to start developing them!!!!

      Don’t swallow the “progressive” mantra on energy and environmental policy. It is just plain wrong, on numerous levels.

      (Oh, and “The One” is not an average, ordinary man; nor a superman with or without a cape… Don’t push that meme…)

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

    …in fossil fuel reserves of all kinds according to…the US government: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34233

    The fact that we’re forced to drill in mile deep waters for oil is the fault of the anti-capitalist eco-Marxist Left. Will anyone in the MSM point this out? No. Will anyone point out that we are only “addicted” to foreign oil because our own government has made it nearly impossible to extract our own resources? No.

    We could be net exporters of oil if we had the will. We could control the world price or oil and crush OPEC and Russia. We could eliminate our national debt. We could create hundreds of thousands of great paying union jobs. We could restore our national preeminence. All of these positives would free us from dependency on other nations, something The Left opposes. They constantly seek to undermine and weaken our nation and this offshore drilling ban is just another opportunity for them.

    We must defeat the socialists and drive them from the field forever.

  • http://www.reddogreport.com reddogreport

    The Federal Government is only concerned with grabbing power, the economic ramifications of their actions are irrelevant; at least to them.

  • Common_Cents

    Instead as a pretend lawyer all he did was point fingers at bp saying they were to blame, duh? There should have been a full govt response for p
    spill cleanup and shoreline protection. Bp could have still been held responsible and handed the bill. Obama sat on his hands waiting for shoreline damage to occur. It’s the only explanation.

  • popdaddy

    Last week the EPA threatens to take over the pollution control permit process from the State of Texas.
    This threat should be noted as part of an Obama regime coordinated attack on gulf state rights. He has no problem destroying industry and jobs in these energy producing states.

    • larueladue

      Can’t Texas say “just butt out!”

  • kicky

    Ignorance is still with Obama! Let Mother Nature have a chance! Grow our fuel!

  • louisiana

    Since crap& tax was introduced, I’ve been saying the D’s wanted to nationalize the energy industry. It won’t be long until legislation is introduced to do just that. We all know that gov.’t is so much more competent/efficient in running
    everything. s/