Last week we reported on numbers showing that despite supposedly lifting his offshore oil drilling moratorium, the Obama administration is maintaining a de facto drilling ban by slowing and sometimes stopping permit issuance all together. GNO Inc., an economic development agency serving the 10-parish New Orleans region, found that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement is issuing 3.8 fewer shallow-water drilling permits per month since August than it was the year leading up to the oil spill. Worse, no new deepwater permits have been issued since May.
As Thomas Clements, co-owner of a Louisiana offshore drilling support business, explains in today’s Human Events this de facto drilling moratorium is killing jobs in the Gulf:
When the President issued his blanket moratorium for six months, every order at Oilfield CNC Machining LLC, the business I run with my wife in Broussard, was canceled. The lucrative energy sector, which generates the demand on which we rely, suddenly went dry. Though the offshore moratorium has officially been lifted, I continue to suffer from a 50% decrease in business as a result of the permitting freeze. To a specialized company like mine, which provides machine parts for offshore drilling rigs, this response has been nearly a deathblow.
Clements story is not unique. Ken Tanguis of Houma, Louisiana, had been a mechanic for Diamond Offshore Drilling for most of his life. But since President Obama instituted his drilling ban, Diamond has laid off more than 300 workers, and now Tanguis only works three weeks on and three weeks off. Tanguis told NPR: “I don’t want a handout from the government. I don’t want a handout from BP. I don’t want anything. I just want to go back to work. I want to go back to drilling.” The only thing standing between Tanguis and a job is President Obama’s de facto drilling ban. We hope the President allows Ken to go back to work soon.
As an engineering search consultant I talk to candidates every day who are seeking employment for a variety of reasons. When I talk to candidates in the Gulf the story is always the same – Obama's drilling moratorium has resulted in lay offs or worse, companies going out of business altogether. The drilling industry is supported by hundreds of companies that employ thousands of people in the Gulf region, but that is changing rapidly.
Obama is doing what he wants to get his agenda passed. The price of gasoline
is up over a dollar since he took office and soon it's going to be over five dollars
a gallon and then those stupid electric cars will sell.
Lifting the ban he will not do. He wants to ruin the oil business, and every other
big business run by Americans. The only way out is to get him out of office.
It appears that Obama is indebted to someone(s) who want(s) us to buy oil from foreign sources rather than U.S. He took over all off-shore permits and now allows few to be granted. He prevents us drilling in many places and obtaining oil from shale in several states. His employees are many and the number is growing by the day. All his employees should receive pink slips from the House as soon as it's governed by Republicans. If he were impeached, would that not solve most of the nation's problems?
The man is a Communist who wants to destroy America.
I wish that the people who are continually posting on blogs that Obama is their President and is the best President they have ever had, would see the ruination that Obama is causing (first) by the mortorium and (second) by not issuing the permits promptly. Obama seems to believe he is above the law and challenges the court system to the Nth degress!!! When will some Judge or maybe the Supreme Court deflat him???