A federal judge overturned the six-month deep water drilling moratorium within the Gulf of Mexico. The ruling that was issued on Tuesday cited economic hardship as a result of the ban and said the government overreached by suspending all deep-water drilling operations either in progress or prepared in the gulf. Oil companies decided to hail the ruling. The Department of Justice said it would quickly appeal the decision. During that exact same time, as the oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico 2010 gushed for the 63rd day, about 106 million gallons of crude and counting have spilled into the sea.
Source for this article: Drilling moratorium overturned by judge with oil company holdings by Personal Money Store
Possibility of drilling moratorium judge being invested in oil
The drilling moratorium was overturned by Judge Martin L.C. Feldman after a group of oil rig service companies filed a complaint. According to ABC News, recent disclosure documents indicate that Feldman, who was appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan, has had financial holdings in oil companies. Feldman said the Interior Department acted as though it were “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it issued a six-month moratorium on drilling new deep-water wells within the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean. Feldman granted a preliminary injunction to Hornbeck Offshore Services to lift the drilling moratorium, saying that he believed the government “failed to cogently reflect the decision to issue a blanket, generic, indeed punitive, moratorium.”
More deep-water drilling uncertain
The moratorium was imposed to give a presidential panel time to come up with recommendations on how to stay away from a future oil spill disaster. According to the Los Angeles Times, it remains uncertain whether the Interior Department would have to start issuing new permits to drill. With an appeal virtually certain to have come from the Obama administration, some analysts are doubting that oil companies would want to start a major deep-water drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico with the possibility it may have to shut down if the appeal succeeds.
Oil companies want to spin drilling moratorium
On today's ruling, the American Petroleum Institute explained in a written statement, “The moratorium was an initial reaction to concerns about the safety of offshore oil and natural gas operations. However, an extended moratorium would have a tremendous impact on the nation’s energy security – and cause significant harm to the region of the country that was already suffering from the spill – without raising safety or improving industry procedures.”
BP oil spill containment failure
Within the meantime CNN reports that government estimates indicate as much as 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons) of oil may be flowing into the Gulf every day, and the gusher has already taken a serious toll on tourism and the fishing industry in Gulf Coast states. BP said Tuesday it had succeeded in collecting less than half of the estimated daily output: 25,830 barrels (1.08 million gallons) of oil over the past 24 hours. The amount is probably the most ever collected; the previous record was set June 18 when 25,290 barrels were collected. BP said it will donate net revenues it receives from the sale of oil recovered from the spill to help the National Fish and Wildlife Federation deal with the oil it won’t be collecting from the oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico 2010.
Read a lot more on this topic here
ABC News
abcnews.go.com/Politics/gulf-oil-spill-disaster-judge-overrules-white-house/story?id=10983980&page=2
Los Angeles times
latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-moratorium-20100623,,7804590.story
CNN
cnn.com/2010/US/06/22/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html?npt=NP1
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