During his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, May 22 [2010], after announcing the co-chairs of the independent commission he created to investigate the Gulf Coast oil spill, President Barack Obama said, "we can only pursue offshore oil drilling if we have assurances that a disaster like the BP oil spill will not happen again."
Obama made this statement less than two weeks after he and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a moratorium on permits for new offshore oil wells and an end to environmental waivers like the one granted to energy giant BP for the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig.
"It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies," Obama said as he announced the moratorium in mid-May. "That cannot and will not happen anymore."
"We're also closing the loophole that has allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews," he said.
Well, apparently not.
Since President Obama announced the moratorium, at least seven new permits for offshore drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted for the kind of work that was being performed on the Deepwater Horizon, according to government records as reported by The New York Times.
And that's on top of the 27 offshore drilling permits and 26 environmental waivers that the U.S. Interior Department issued to oil companies between April 20 when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, killing 11 workers and starting the massive oil spill that continues to threaten the environment and economy of the Gulf Coast, and the day Obama and Salazar announced the moratorium.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an environmental and economic disaster that continues to worsen each day as oil continues to pour unchecked from a damaged underwater oil well. In the midst of this crisis what the American people need--and deserve--is less tough talk and political chest pounding, fewer empty promises, and a lot more leadership and responsible action.
Comments
Amen to that, Larry!
The problem with the White House response has, in part, been because they treated this oil spill as a political problem, and not as an actual problem.