Obama administration blocked efforts to stop BP oil drilling before explosion

In 2009, the Obama administration intervened to support the reversal of a court order that would have halted offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who has long had close ties to the industry, specifically cited BP’s Deepwater Horizon operation as one that should be allowed to go forward, according to a group involved in the court case.

A Washington DC Appeals Court ruled in April 2009 that the Bush administration’s five-year plan for offshore oil and gas drilling (covering 2007 to 2012) was not based on a proper review of the environmental impact of the drilling. Only days before the ruling, the Obama administration had granted BP a “categorical exclusion,” exempting it from an environmental impact study for the Deepwater Horizon project.

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry trade group, intervened to reverse the court order, and was backed by the administration.

Kierán Suckling, executive director and founder the Center for Biological Diversity, which was involved in the original lawsuit, told the World Socialist Web Site that Salazar “filed a special motion asking the court to lift the injunction, and he cited the BP drilling several times by name in the request.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/oilr-m10.shtml

Hmmm. They wouldn't keep doing that kind of thing, even now, now after the gusher, would they?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4372633&mesg_id=4373314

My "hmmm" was intended as a subtle thing. There was a lot of attempt to deconstruct that information as, you know- "nonsense!".

I misunderstood. It sure can't hurt. Thank you.

:hi:

Because WSWS.org is known for making shit up out of whole cloth.

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attack the messenger

got something against socialism?

prefer predatory corporatism?

cuz that's the "news" you're getting from the wholly owned corporate Orwellian Television.

are they the ones that told you this website was making stuff up?

please cite what they made up

put the link right

here \/ \/ \/

not that i expect you to acknowledge it, since you/your pals post the same thing every time, & have never acknowledged the many times the facts proved *you* to be "making shit up out of whole cloth".

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

1. The Bush administration. The oil-drilling lease was sold to BP by the George W. Bush administration in 2007 under its 2007-2012 Five-Year Offshore Oil Drilling Plan.

2. The Obama administration. The actual exploratory drilling was approved by the Obama administration on April 6, 2009.

Within days of the 2009 approval, the Center for Biological Diversity and its allies won a court order vacating the Bush Five-Year Offshore Drilling Plan. Rather than use the court order as a timeout on new offshore oil drilling to develop a new plan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar filed a special motion with the court to exempt approved oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. He specifically identified BP’s operation as one that should be released from the vacature.

In July 2009, the court agreed to Salazar’s request, releasing all approved offshore oil drilling — including the BP operation — from the vacature.

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/energy/dirty_energy_development/oil_and_gas/gulf_oil_spill/index.html

what I was thinking as soon as I started reading the original message. Sounds like some bullshit maybe thrown in there? Most of what I read or hear these days includes a lot of bullshit which only comes out a few days or weeks down the road.

But thanks for playing, I guess...

Or do we have to trust you?

Please provide examples of wsws.org "making shit up" or retract your baseless accusation.

Can you find anything else Hannah Bell? You're better at the google than I am.

edit: grammar

I'm trying to find something about the DC Court of Appeals. No success yet.

and their conclusions. :(

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is moving ahead with an oil lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico next month despite legal questions about whether the proposal and other offshore drilling plans initially drawn up under President George W. Bush went through a full environmental review.

The decision comes four months after the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington blocked lease sales in Alaska, saying the Bush administration didn't properly study the environmental consequences. The Alaska drilling was part of a five-year plan to expand drilling around the country, including in the Gulf. The court didn't say whether its ruling also applied to Gulf drilling, but many experts watching the case said they believed the decision could cover the entire program, not just the Alaska portion.

Interior spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said the agency has sought clarification from the courts. But after not getting further guidance, Secretary Ken Salazar decided to move ahead, Barkoff said.

http://blog.al.com/press-register-business/2009/07/interior_plans_offshore_drilli.html


U.S. court approves Gulf of Mexico oil drilling plan
By USE PAC Admin on July 30, 2009 1:01 PM | 0 Comments
Wed Jul 29, 2009 2:30pm EDT

By Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a big win for oil companies, a federal appeals court said it will allow the U.S. Interior Department to move forward with oil and natural gas leasing plans for the Gulf of Mexico that were drawn up by the Bush administration.

The department in May sought clarification of a court decision that struck down the Bush administration's five-year (2007 to 2012) offshore oil and gas drilling plan based on the court's findings that a proper review had not been done on how the drilling would affect the environment.

The initial dispute focused on offshore drilling in Alaskan waters, but the department wanted to know whether leases in the Gulf of Mexico would also be affected.

In a ruling on Tuesday, the U.S. District Court in Washington said leasing plans for the Gulf could continue, as could drilling off Alaska, but the department would have to conduct a review of the environmental risks before approving significant energy development activities. If the department fails to carry out the risk analysis, the court said it may throw out the leasing plan.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was pleased with the court's decision and will go forward with a Gulf of Mexico lease sale planned for August 19.


http://blackoilblog.com/2009/07/us-court-approves-gulf-of-mexico-oil-drilling-plan.html

Bush who didn't conduct an environmental review; Obama didn't conduct one for this current Deepwater catastrophe;

of course Salazar was pleased, as he doesn't comply!

Did the Obama administration tell BP they could drill without an automatic blowout preventer?

I agree that Salazar is not the right man for the job.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/36976376#3697637...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/36976376#36976376

(Categorical Exclusion) should be fired and investigated for pattern of behavior and sources of income.

I never liked the appointment of Salazar. He is a non-fundie James Watt.

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who pipe up to say that site just "makes stuff up".

they spin (who doesn't?), but i've never found they just "make stuff up". unlike fox news. or the cato institute.

or like a link to the new york times = "truth".

weapons of mass destruction, anyone?

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I was looking back in the archives there. I am neither a whiner nor a denier, but I do like to source stuff I read on the web.

Also, were you aware that name calling is against the rules? Also not polite.

Back to the whole site: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/ as well as the specific comments cited above.

The thank you was genuine.

But my curiosity has been satisfied. So all is well.

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http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/30/in-ironic-twist-bp...


(thanks to Jean)

(Bet they don't win now, huh?)

the planet and to the future of all life on it. Nobody can ever say you didn't make a real effort to save the earth, or that you were corrupt and bought off and put your own selfish interests ahead of the environment and the source of all life and the idea that, working together, we could have created a genuinely sustainable society.*

:nuke: :cry:

*if this needs a sarcasm "smiley," the clue train left a long time ago and you missed it.

and a mess to clean up that goes beyond the crude oil that's now fouling up the Gulf.

what would be totally, astoundingly shocking would be if Obama and his hand-picked status-quo planet-destroying yes-men actually did something different once in a while besides licking the ass of the mega-corps.

What BP and the rest of the owners of the earth want, they get.
All forms of life hurt by those actions (i.e., every living thing on the planet)--too bad, profit is king and everything must be destroyed for it.

ahhh the strange bedfellows.....remember Dashle who pushed Obama during our primaries..and was one of his top advisors...........working with Whitman..the lady who lied about the air quality at Ground zero in NY?? Can i tickle your memory..she lied and people died and keep dying!! And that is just one example..

Spill, Baby, Spill
By Michael Isikoff, Ian Yarett and Matthew Philips | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated May 10, 2010

BP has been trying hard to burnish its public image in recent years after being hit with a pair of environmental disasters, including a fatal refinery explosion in Texas and a pipeline leak in Alaska. One major step was to announce, in 2007, that it had hired a high-powered advisory board that included former EPA director Christine Todd Whitman, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, and Leon Panetta, who were each paid $120,000 a year. (Panetta left when he became President Obama's CIA director.) Two years ago the oil giant's chief executive, Robert Malone, flew board members out to the Gulf of Mexico on a helicopter to demonstrate the safeguards surrounding BP's advanced drilling technology. "We got a sense they were really committed to ensuring they got it right," Whitman told NEWSWEEK.

Now BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, finds itself blamed for what could prove to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history. And only weeks after Obama announced an ambitious plan to open up more U.S. offshore waters to oil drilling, shunting aside environmental concerns from his own Democratic Party, his administration is facing a comeuppance from hell. "There was a lot of wishful thinking, I guess," says Villy Kourafalou, a scientist at the University of Miami's Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "The new technologies were said to be so wonderful that we'd never have an oil spill again." Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who had sought to block the expanded drilling, says the oil and gas industry was pushing this idea hard. "They said, 'We'll never have a repeat of Santa Barbara,'?" referring to the 1969 rig explosion off the California coast. Both the Bush and Obama administrations "were buying the line that the technology was fine," Pallone adds.

BP pressed hard to make that point in D.C. Its PR efforts included payments of $16 million last year to a battery of Washington lobbyists, among them the firm of Tony Podesta, the brother of former Obama transition chief John Podesta. Last fall, after the U.S. Interior Department proposed tighter federal regulation of oil companies' environmental programs, David Rainey, BP's vice president for Gulf of Mexico exploration, told Congress that the proposal was unnecessary. "I think we need to remember," he said, that offshore drilling "has been going on for the last 50 years, and it has been going on in a way that is both safe and protective of the environment."

Read the full article at:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237298

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You should also look at this and the Loop currents ..from Tampa news..!0 Connects ..Tampa Bay Fl..great map of Loop Current.

Oil Spill: Loop Current and winds

http://www.wtsp.com/news/mostpop/story.aspx?storyid=131136&provider=top

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Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf
Source: McClatchy

Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf

By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama's vow that his administration would launch a "relentless response effort" to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling.

The exemptions, known as "categorical exclusions," were granted by the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, or MMS, and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a British Petroleum exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.

"Is there a moratorium on offshore drilling or not?" asked Peter Galvin, the conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that discovered the administration's continued approval of the exemptions. "Possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has occurred, and nothing appears to have changed."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/07/93761/despite-spill-feds-still-giving.html

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and never forget this..we Floridans won't!!!


YouTube - Barack Obama on Offshore Oil Drilling ( to Florida voters while asking for their votes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8fkbEuCQss&NR=1

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Obama: “Oil Rigs Today Generally Don’t Cause Spills”

Obama Repeats Katrina Oil Spill Myth To Defend Offshore Drilling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm8gLmuTvJ4&feature=play ...


By: David Dayen Thursday April 29, 2010 1:42 pm

snip:

What a difference 18 days makes. Here was Barack Obama, on April 2, before the BP oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, claiming that oil rigs are safe to justify his position on offshore drilling:

I don’t agree with the notion that we shouldn’t do anything. It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.

Not only does this quote look ridiculous in hindsight, it wasn’t true at the time, as Brad Johnson points out:

Obama’s claim that oil rigs did not cause any spills during Hurricane Katrina is simply false, as the Wonk Room reported in June, 2008, when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and other conservatives made the same false claim:

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused 124 Offshore Spills For A Total Of 743,700 Gallons. 554,400 gallons were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs and pipelines, and 189,000 gallons were refined products from platforms and rigs.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused Six Offshore Spills Of 42,000 Gallons Or Greater. The largest of these was 152,250 gallons, well over the 100,000 gallon threshhold considered a “major spill.”

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/04/29/obama-oil-rigs-t ... ’t-cause-spills/

It's just business as usual with this administration. In fact, I don't think Obama could function without multigazillion-dollar lobbyists around to make policy. Where would we be now without the influence of lobbyists from the health insurance companies steering the "health care reform" "debate"? He appears to be simply the figurehead of the real controllers of the country. After a bandaid is applied in the Gulf and the sycophants have diverted the public with some irrelevant scandal or other, along with endless pontificating and breaking wind over trivial bullshit, drilling--destructive deep drilling and earthicide--will continue as before, and we can dream about what might have been as the planet dies and we scramble for food.

He is, however, as bad as President Clinton. We needed so much better.

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:evilfrown:

industrialist, government officials and office holders, and pay and pay and pay. Jail Salazar, fine him into penury. Expropriate not just BP but all of the energy companies, the profit motive makes them de facto irresponsible. Life at hard labor(clean up) for the corporate perps, with a dead turtle strapped to their backs.

And none of that will do a damn bit of good, 'cept for a little satisfaction, if we still got capitalism, it is destroying us.

That's the Appeals Court action Suckling is talking about in the article.

thanks for posting

Some just won't want to accept them.

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or for emphasis ..!..

The fucker doesn't care about shooting wolves why would he care about anything else environmental.

Salazar is exactly where the boss wanted him!!

Conservative politics in action disguised as Democratic.

A lot of bobbing and weaving by Sec Gibbs. I have to wonder if Sec Salazar investigating himself and his own agenda is going to produce the best possible outcome.

while the Gulf is destroyed for centuries..and wildlife and marine life and our pristine beaches die a slow or fast death...but a miserable death nonetheless.

And just think of what our GREAT NATION has done to Iraq and Afgan enviornments that we can't see!! And they have made sure we can't see!

What a lovely nation we have..we destroy all that is good and replace it with shit!

process

with waivers to greenlight as soon as the "time out" and all the rethinkin is over. Time is money.

Amazing priorities, no?

by Congress to explain once again what is going on in the MMS. They will ask how his investigation went. They will shake some fingers for us on TV.

not if enough people find out?

is so absurd that every line officer up to Salazar would be questioned and their personal finances and relationships investigated. Certainly there are GWB officials complicit and MMS/DOI insiders that are not stupid, hubris yes.

The CE that did not consider the environmental nor economic importance of the Gulf of Mexico on southern Gulf states of significance when using future edge technology? Not even an EA nor an EIS?

Someone here at DU must be knowledgeable and connected if not complicit to show the hierarchy of signing officials, Fed Register Implementing Regulations published in the Federal Register, tiered NEPA programmatic documents necessary for the Categorical Exclusion(s), appurtement agency data like Best Management Practices, standard contract boilerplate and boilerplate options, etc.

Drill offshore, forget safety, issue exceptions, don't adequately fund alternative energy projects...and on and on and on. Obama may have some scruples and values that are admirable, but none of them show through when it comes to the energy game...he is an honest politician, when bought he stays bought! Whoppee, Yay Dallas, Houston, Wall St!

Thanks.

the laissez-faire lack of caring about the corrupt MMS? the attitude, not of suspending all drilling, but of simply "reconsidering" whether or not to drill--like, it "might be all right" after this is "taken care of"--that attitude? and what about these 27 exemptions SINCE the leak?

DC is crawling with lobbyists, and there has been plenty posted about all the perks and payola they're handing out, can't believe you've missed it.

It seems to me that the snake has two heads. We are addicted to the product -- goes without saying. We are also dependent on the revenues. If our deficit is already back-breaking, how do we replace Treasury revenues if we ban offshore drilling?




I do not defend offshore drilling here. I want the practice ended yesterday. We must find a way to emancipate our planet from petroleum's murderous grip. But the US and the most of the rest of the world, are not yet ready to make the hard choices.

Bad administration, bad!

Obama should come out soon to say he made a mistake in supporting further off-shore drilling, either basede on faulty impac statements or just plain ignorance. Admit it and stop it! To keep making the same mistake is unforgivable.

His secret debt commission is also sponsored by a fascist billionaire's personal foundation devoted to destroying social security.

Destroying the Gulf of Mexico & Social Security... change you can believe in!

the rest:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050404118.html

***********************************************************************

Here's the actual MMS BP EP document. pdf is 53 pages.

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/initial_exploration_plan050410.pdf

WAPO links to it in the story.

***********************************************************************

MMS related policy for the interested/curious:

http://www.mms.gov/eppd/compliance/nepa/policy/ce/index.htm

WH doesn't agree with the account.



This is no different from all the claims early in the Obama Presidency that he was supporting Bush's policies when in fact they were still being reviewed. It's utterly ridiculous to expect that the administration was going to come in and change the entire government in three months.

How long should we wait for President Obama to discontinue Bush's policies?

posted in this thread? Ones made ready for BP's next proposed adventures-- BP, the company responsible for the deaths of 11 of its rig workers, countless more injuries, and the ongoing man-made environmental and economic catastrophe of the GOM and no clue how to mitigate it?

How do you account for the thinking and quality of these ongoing decisions?

Why would the Obama administration back the API, which is about as pro-drill, anti environment as they come? The American Petroleum Institute is a far right pro-oil group that has worked against environmental protections, alternative energy, as well as lobbying for huge tax breaks and subsidies(corporate welfare) for oil companies. And Obama is backing them specifically on the Deepwater(Macondo prospect) oil field exemption?

Was Candidate Obama replaced by the Republican pod-people? Is he a trojan horse politician designed to continue conservative policies under the guise of being a Democratic President?

:eyes: