API: Recent Studies Show Obama Drilling Moratorium Will Cost 50,000 Jobs; 160,000 by 2032
While Obama tried to stop offshore drilling and exploration here and while his administration puts more of our domestic resources off-limits, the White House is using taxpayer dollars to aid Petro-Brazil's offshore drilling efforts in waters deeper than the United States. George Soros is an investor in PetroBraz and this falls in line with the view of the academic left, that the wealth of the united states should be redistributed to the rest of the world. One way to do that is to send our jobs overseas and to have us send our money abroad for energy.
"As our country looks for ways out of the hole of lackluster economic growth and job creation, today's decision shows that this administration would rather keep digging than take the ladder to increased economic prosperity offered by developing our nation's domestic energy resources. "The oil and natural gas industry is a reliable vehicle for growing the economy and creating good-paying jobs.
This decision shuts the door on new development off our nation's coasts and effectively ensures that new American jobs will not be realized. It will stifle investment, deny billions in revenue for critical government services and increase our dependence on foreign energy sources.
"The oil and natural gas industry is committed to safe and environmentally responsible operations, and both the industry and regulators have added new safeguards to ensure such operations. This reversal on new lease sales off America's coasts comes on top of a de facto moratorium, which has all but stopped new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico."
More from Jan Van Ryan:
For months, numerous studies--such as this one from LSU professor Dr. Joseph Mason and another by Moody's Analytics--have demonstrated the significant economic impact the deepwater drilling moratorium could have on the Gulf and U.S. economies.
A Southern Methodist University (SMU) study released this week is no different, and it presents some alarming figures on the impact the de facto moratorium is having on shallow-water drilling.
According to Dr. Bernard L. Weinstein, associate director of SMU's Maguire Energy Institute, the Interior Department's slowdown in issuing new permits for shallow-water drilling operations could mean:
50,000 lost jobs;
Economic losses of $4.3 billion that would occur if 75 percent of the rigs become idle as a result of fewer issued permits; and
$12.5 billion in lost income nationwide.
As Dr. Weinstein points out, shallow-water drilling is extremely safe. In the last 15 years, the federal government reports that more than 11,000 wells have been drilled and just 15 barrels of oil have spilled as a result of a loss of well control:
"Shallow-water drillers work in less than 500 feet of water, mainly extracting natural gas. Projects center on well-charted fields of known pressure and geography, using simple and straightforward technology."
Prior to the moratorium, 10 to 15 permits for new shallow-water wells were approved each month. But since April, only seven permits for new shallow-water wells have been issued, and 15 of 46 shallow-water rigs in the Gulf are idle.
As Jack Gerard mentioned in a blog post last week, a drilling slowdown hurts more than just oil companies. It's time to put the oil and natural gas industry back to work and produce reliable American energy for Americans