While the DC press corps and Peggy Noonan are crying like teenage girls about Daddy’s inability to make everything all better, let’s not forget that the policy Obama announced at his latest conference was sane, reasonable and right. Here’s oil industry analyst Dan Pickering:
On Thursday, President Obama called a halt to all deepwater drilling that is currently ongoing. While it might sound like blasphemy coming from a Texan with his livelihood tied to the oil / financial industry, the Obama decision is actually understandable. Can we blame the politicians for being cautious? There are 30+ rigs in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico performing some sort of well operation (drilling, workovers, completions, etc). Can the government really say with certainty that the current regulations and oversight will keep something bad from happening there? Probably not…as it didn’t stop the accident at the Macondo blowout. And therefore, is it worth the risk to let those 30 rigs continue drilling?
So as odd as it seems, the political and practical answers actually line up here. Stop, look, listen, evaluate, assess….and then set the new rules and guidelines on a timely basis. New standards by the end of 2010 is a reasonable timeline for something so serious and complex. For the 50,000+ workers actively involved in offshore oil production, a few months of slowdown is more than worth it if we can emerge with an industry that is safer (both for humans and the environment) and trusted again by the American public.
Some will probably take this as ironclad proof that Obama didn’t go far enough, but I think Pickering has it about right.