Judge blocks Gulf offshore drilling moratorium

[ludahai]

In post #26 you state:

What else did you mean from this statement if not that the judge was effectively "bought off"?

You shouldn't have done that. You confront Orion with facts and his own words and he bails from the thread.

 

[apdst]

Actually, there are already more than 3,600 wells in the Gulf, so looks to me like it has been opened up pretty good. On another note, want to know how much hypocritical BS there is in all this rubbish about Louisiana losing its economy? Of the more than 3,600 wells in the Gulf, only 36 of them are deep water exploration wells that the moratorium would affect. This is more about Republicans, along with the special interests that have bought them, giving Obama the middle finger for the sake of giving Obama the middle finger. And, BTW, the judge who issued the ruling has stock in the very company who built the Deepwater Horizon well, and owns a lot of stock in oil companies. Repeat after me - Conflict of interest. If that judge had ethics, he would have recused himself from the case, since his own financial interests are directly tied to it.



I believe that this will be overturned on appeal.

Your talking about production platforms. The moratorium effects drilling rigs.

 

[Hoplite]

Your talking about production platforms. The moratorium effects drilling rigs.

Danarhea is still correct

Judge lifts offshore drilling ban as `overbearing' - Yahoo! News

The White House promised an immediate appeal. The Interior Department had imposed the moratorium last month in the wake of the BP disaster, halting approval of any new permits for deepwater projects and suspending drilling on 33 exploratory wells.

 

[NolaMan]

Well...is it true that an extremely limited number of wells would be effected by the moratorium?

The moratorium only effects 33 deepwater exploratory platforms.

However, as I posted earlier in this thread, the economic impact is still quite large. I will post again below:

From the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association:
Suspension of operations means roughly 33 floating drilling rigs – typically leased for hundreds of thousands of dollars per day – will be idled for six months or longer.
$250,000 to $500,000 per day, per rig – results in roughly $8,250,000 to $16,500,000 per day in costs for idle rigs;

Secondary impacts include:
• Supply boats – 2 boats per rig with day rates of $15,000/day per boat - $30,000/day for 33 rigs – nearly $1 million/day
• Impacts to other supplies and related support services (i.e., welders, divers, caterers, transportation, etc.)

Jobs –
Each drilling platform averages 90 to 140 employees at any one time (2 shifts per day), and 180 to 280 for 2 2-week shifts
Each E&P job supports 4 other positions
Therefore, 800 to 1400 jobs per idle rig platform are at risk
Wages for those jobs average $1,804/weekly; potential for lost wages is huge, over $5 to $10 million for 1 month – per platform.
Wages lost could be over $165 to $330 million/month for all 33 platforms

Secondary impacts: Many offshore workers live in Louisiana. The state is going to see a decrease in income taxes and sales taxes that would normally be paid by those employees. (The state does not collect a sales tax on oilfield supplies and equipment used offshore.)