EcocentricOil
While the rest of us wait to see whether a brewing storm will bring oil spill containment and cleanup on BP’s spill to a halt—just when the endgame had begun—the oil industry is moving on. Yesterday four of the biggest oil companies announced they were committing $1 billion to build a rapid-response system to cleanup deepwater oil …
EcocentricOil
I’ve already asked whether President Obama’s deepwater drilling moratorium is a smart policy, given the fact that it won’t do much unless we attack oil demand at the source. But I still thought that a temporary timeout for certain sorts of deepwater drilling made sense. The Deepwater Horizon accident proved not just that well blowouts …
EcocentricOil
Frustrated twice by the federal courts—which had overturned his original temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling—President Obama Monday evening decided to do what most of us have probably wanted to do when denied by someone in a position of authority: he went ahead anyway. (Sometimes it’s good to be President.) Interior Secretary …
EcocentricOil
Government lawyers will be in a federal appeals court in New Orleans today, fighting to reinstate a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. The temporary ban—put in place by President Obama after the BP spill to give a presidential commission time to reevaluate the safety of deepwater drilling—was overturned last month by a …
EcocentricOil
Almost exactly a week ago, executives from the major international oil companies stood before Congress for questioning. They defended the oil industry’s record on offshore drilling and distanced themselves from BP and its mistakes. But on one area they had to admit defeat. After Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts showed copies …
