In the wake of the Gulf oil disaster, President Obama has placed a minimum of six months moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf.
Escalating his administration's response to the disastrous Gulf oil spill, President Barack Obama announced Thursday a moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling permits will be continued for six months while a presidential commission investigates, a White House aide said.
Controversial lease sales off the coast of Alaska will be delayed pending the results of the commission's investigation, and lease sales planned in the Western Gulf and off the coast of Virginia are canceled, the President announced at a news conference.
Shell Oil was poised to begin exploratory drilling this summer on Arctic leases as far as 140 miles offshore.
The president says that he's doing this because he doesn't believe that offshore drilling is safe until we know why this spill happened. A good question for President Obama is how did oil companies drill safely for decades without creating a spill.
The president makes it seem as though offshore oil drilling is some sort of a rogue exercise not to be trusted. In fact, it's a multi billion dollar yearly industry that employs tens of thousands. Many of these folks are currently working in the very areas that are hit by the spill.
The spill will cause an untold ecological and economic disaster. Now, President Obama will compound that disaster by causing more economic havoc on top of it.
This is the typical script. A crisis hits, and politicians, looking to be seen as enough caring and concerned, over react. That over reaction winds up causing even more pain.
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