More party infighting looms large as LA's Dem Senator, Mary Landrieu, promises to block Obama's OMB nominee, Jack Lew, until the deepwater drilling moratorium has been lifted, of "significantly modified." While the lawsuit filed over the ban, struck down in federal courts, waits it's government appeal in the higher courts, Landrieu is still alarmed at the job loss inpact that some still economists predict could be as high as 58,000 in not only the oil industry, but it's boomerang effect on support industries as well in the State, until the moratorium's current sunset date at the end of November.
Since it's implementation in May, the moratoriums has idled 33 rigs doing exploratory drilling, and at fived have pulled up anchor, so to speak, to head to currently active drilling projects. Landrieu can expect a serious battle from the White House, as they hit the airwaves just last week with an internal WH report commissioned with the Bipartisan Policy Center to study the effects of the moratorium in five Parishes. Their findings were that the job loss is confined to no more than 8000 to 12,000 jobs.
"The evidence suggests that job impacts among workers in larger companies, particularly the drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, may be relatively limited because these companies have chosen to retain their skilled labor," according to Thursday's inter-agency report. "Most of the potential employment impacts may be in businesses that provide supplies and support to the drilling industry in the Gulf Coast."
Landrieu and fellow Republican Senator, David Vitter, have criticized the findings as rosy at best, citing that the report didn't address what was tantamount to a de factor shallow water drilling. Prior to BP's Deepwater Horizon tragedy, permit applications were averaging about 40 monthly for shallow water drilling. Since the moratorium, there has been only about a dozen in month's time.
The employment findings were also questionable, as temporary clean up jobs skewed job loss for the oil drilling and support industries. But that's an old trick with this administration, blessed with the convenience of timing – hiring Census workers and enjoying broadcasting the false positives on employment to a seriously stressed out nation.
In direct conflict with Obama's distorted reality is Jack Noe of the Shallow Water Energy Coalition, calling it "outrageous" to consider clean up jobs a net positive.
"Spinning this as a positive is like saying that a hurricane is good for the economy because of all of the rebuilding work it will provide afterward," Noe said. "It's the cleanup that's 'temporary,' not the impact of the moratorium."
Mr. Noe has a few stats of his own, and the picture isn't pretty, as you can see by Slide Five of his power point presentation on the SWEC site.
Chiming right in is LSU economist, Joseph Mason, who was a bit more politically correct in terming the snow job of a report "overly optimistic". Altho his own studies echo that of Obama's Bipartisan Policy Center's limited scope, the job losses will not immediately stop when the moratorium is lifted, and extension of the moratorium poses serious risks.
In addition to the sleight of hand employment trick with clean up jobs, Commerce Undersecretary, Rebecca Blank, avows many of the rig workers kept their jobs, using the time to repair rigs and to be around in the anticipation that deepwater drilling will resume post moratorium. The monkey in that wrench is, as SWEC's stats above point out, even shallow water drilling is taking a hit, and the deepwater drilling permit process is far more complex. Combine that with deepwater drilling rigs aren't as common as 7-11's on every urban corner, and the resumption of any drilling is likely to be a painful ramp up period of time.
While we all knew that the moratorium was not going to nestly comfortably into the Obama/Dem talking points of jobs "created or saved", what is pleasantly surprising is to see one of his own party, taking a very strong vocal lead in opposition to the WH.
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