Obama Gives a Bipartisan Commission Six Months to Revise Drilling Rules

Thank You President Obama!

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President Obama established a bipartisan national commission on Friday to investigate what caused the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and figure out where the government went wrong so as to “make sure it never happens again,” as he put it.

Mr. Obama tapped two prominent former officials to lead the commission — Bob Graham, the former senator from Florida, and William K. Reilly, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency — and gave them six months to come up with a plan to revamp federal regulation of offshore oil drilling.
“If the laws on our books are inadequate to prevent such an oil spill, or if we didn’t enforce those laws, I want to know it,” Mr. Obama said in his Saturday radio and Internet address. “I want to know what worked and what didn’t work in our response to the disaster, and where oversight of the oil and gas industry broke down. We know, for example, that a cozy relationship between oil and gas companies and agencies that regulate them has long been a source of concern.”

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/us/23address.html?ref=politics>

I hope a moratorium on deep water drilling is in effect until such time that appropriate measures can be put in place. Oh, and if they can't guarantee no more deep water disasters, then no more deep water drilling. Period.

Oh, and don't pull the mud until concrete testing is done.

The sad thing is that *I*, as a person who has never been on a rig in my life, can figure this out.

Norway has state owned oil and has a lot of regulations. We either need to do a lot of regulations like that or forget about deep sea drilling.

there is no need to go on.

27 more approvals since the explosion. 26 of which were exempted from review?

Having a bunch of paperwork is not the problem.

not allow any new offshore drilling. Ever. We cannot deal with the disasters that can occur.

They did not seem to have a shut off switch. They took mud out before they tried to seal the well. None of those are methods that experts in deep sea drilling recommend. There is deep sea drilling in other countries but they own their oil companies. But even Norway has issues with possible blowouts. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/averting-a-north-sea-blowout/

It just seems like even with regulations, deep sea drilling is extremely risky, for all countries. I tend to side with you on this.

or new excuse made and the countdown to a bigger and more ruinous mess begins.

Wanna take contained risks or allow those willing to take on more danger with reasonable knowledge of what they are getting into is one thing but gambling well beyond the bounds of the willing participants is a totally different matter. We don't have a right to vote for every tree, fish, and critter much less so for the human souls who can only get the downside.

It is also stupid to take risks that put you in a spot where winning the whole time the game is played cannot possibly offset the cost of a loss. Its like risking the electric chair for a year's worth of Applebee's coupons or something to continue this offshore drilling. Even under the best and most vigilante care the best layed plans go to hell and when there are profit motivations the willful errors stack up.

We have 2% of the supply, use 25% of every drop pumped, and the product is sold on a global market. We have no significant ability to increase supply or to reduce cost in any meaningful way over any amount of time. The real rewards for our off shore platforms go to very few in any real terms but the risk is universal.

There is no rational case for continuing this practice at this time other than if you stand to pocket the proceeds.

anymore.But of course ...

and, together with it, the equally reckless proposal to build more of the tritium-leaking nuclear plans, and his dishonest promotion of "Clean Oil."