Lawsuit Alleges Obama is Illegally Thwarting Offshore Drilling
A new lawsuit filed by an independent American
oil and gas company charges that the Obama administration is blocking
legitimate efforts to find and produce oil from offshore wells.
“Given the challenges still facing the U.S.
economy, the government needs to move aside and let private industry do
what private industry does best: create jobs and increase our oil supply
to help lower the price at the pump,” a report from the Heritage
Foundation states.
“And yet the Obama administration remains
committed to strangling America’s economic revival by doing everything
in its power to prevent companies that obtain offshore leases from
actually drilling and producing oil — a fact evidenced by a new lawsuit
just filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims by an independent U.S.
oil and gas company.”
By March 2010, ATP Oil & Gas Corporation
received oil leases and necessary permits to drill in the Gulf of
Mexico, and installed state-of-the-art drilling and processing equipment
to safely access already-penetrated oil reservoirs, according to the
report. The project was financed with $1.5 billion from J.P. Morgan.
Then in April 2010, the BP-operated Deepwater
Horizon rig in the Gulf exploded while drilling a well into a previously
unexplored reservoir. In response, the Obama administration ordered
moratoria on deep-water drilling and barred consideration of new
permits.
As a result, the ATP operation was shut down.
ATP has now struck back by filing a lawsuit
alleging that the Interior Department “improperly and illegally
suspended all deep-water offshore drilling activities and imposed two
illegal moratoria on the deep-water drilling permit application process
and then unreasonably and unlawfully delayed the issuance of drilling
permits after the lifting of the formal moratoria.”
ATP is essentially asserting that the government
breached its offshore leases with ATP by violating the Administrative
Procedure Act in two ways, according to the Heritage Foundation report
written by Hans von Spakovsky and Nicolas Loris: “By issuing overbroad
moratoria, and by manipulating seven experts from the National Academy
of Engineering (NAE) to bolster a recommendation for the moratoria.”[Actually
the Obama administration didn't "manipulate" the experts - it told an
outright lie about their recommendations, claiming they recommended the
moratorium when they hadn't!]
They also point out that all seven NAE experts
denied supporting moratoria recommendations, and a previous court case
concluded that a White House official had changed the report used to
justify the moratoria.[As I said above - one more LIE from the Obama White House.]
The authors write: “ATP’s lawsuit provides a
revealing glimpse into the capital-intensive oil and gas industry where
unfair and illegal actions by a government agency can cost companies
(and the U.S. economy) enormous sums of money.”
Opening the outer continental shelf to drilling,
they add, “would generate hundreds of thousands of new jobs, generate
hundreds of billions of dollars in government revenue, and bring more
oil to the world market, thereby lowering gas prices.”
http://response.restoration.n...
economy, the government needs to move aside and let private industry do
what private industry does best: create jobs and increase our oil supply
to help lower the price at the pump,”
Translation:
"You're through. Don't you see that you're through? What else do you need [to hear]? Give up and get out of the way. Leave men free to exist."
-- Dagny Taggart VP-Ops, TTRR
U.S. Backs $1B Loan to Mexico for Oil Drilling Despite Obama Moratorium. Another Foreign Oil Company? What About American Oil Rig Workers?
and
0bama Underwrites Offshore Drilling Too bad it's not in U.S. waters. It was for a company in Brazil where one of the big investors was George Soros........I think it was for
$2Billion. I had these articles saved in my mail box, but the links no longer work.
I do recall that when 0bama went to Brazil, he told their government the US wanted
to be their best customer........... then later I read that China had contracted with
Brazil to buy that oil we underwrote with $2 billion.
The Brazilian contract with China for that oil we subsidized, reminds me of the
oil from Canada that China wants to buy because 0bama wouldn't OK the Keystone Pipeline from Canada through the US to the Gulf.................
Has anyone thought of this scenario?,,,,,, China and America go to war......and China
has control of the worlds oil supply.......... they are over wooing Iran who is wooing
Iraq and Syria.......... How can we fight a war without oil? Maybe they would get
Russia to be on their side, because in this day and age China and Russia seem
to have mutual interests and goals.
and subsidizing oil drilling for Brazil and Mexico.....with taxpayer money. If
it is to risky for America to drill, then wouldn't it be just as risky for the environment
for Brazil and Mexico to drill? In fact, in this past year I read about an oil spill
at a Mexican platform site. That is the issue, not where China gets its oil!
AUGUST 18, 2009, 1:45 P.M. ET
Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling Too bad it's not in U.S. waters.
You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.
The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.
But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted ha...
AUGUST 18, 2009, 1:45 P.M. ET
Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling Too bad it's not in U.S. waters.
You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil.
The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil's Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil's planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a "preliminary commitment" letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.
But look on the bright side. If President Obama has embraced offshore drilling in Brazil, why not in the old U.S.A.? The land of the sorta free and the home of the heavily indebted has enormous offshore oil deposits, and last year ahead of the November elections, with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Congress let a ban on offshore drilling expire.
The Bush Administration's five-year plan (2007-2012) to open the outer continental shelf to oil exploration included new lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2007 environmentalists went to court to block drilling in Alaska and in April a federal court ruled in their favor. In May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his department was unsure whether that ruling applied only to Alaska or all offshore drilling. So it asked an appeals court for clarification. Late last month the court said the earlier decision applied only to Alaska, opening the way for the sale of leases in the Gulf. Mr. Salazar now says the sales will go forward on August 19.
This is progress, however slow. But it still doesn't allow the U.S. to explore in Alaska or along the East and West Coasts, which could be our equivalent of the Tupi oil fields, which are set to make Brazil a leading oil exporter. Americans are right to wonder why Mr. Obama is underwriting in Brazil what he won't allow at home.
http://online.wsj.com/article...
http://romanticpoet.wordpress...