Right-wing attacks Obama for drilling job losses that didn't happen
Right-wing media are falsely claiming that Obama "deliberately wrote off" 23,000 workers "in pursuit of its junk science-based [oil] drilling moratorium." In fact, as The New York Times reports, the predicted job losses due to the moratorium have "failed to materialize."
Right-wing media: Obama "deliberately wrote off" 23,000 workers "in pursuit of its junk science-based [oil] drilling moratorium"
Malkin: Obama
"deliberately wrote off" the 23,000 drilling jobs "in pursuit of its junk
science-based [oil] drilling moratorium." In an August 25 column,
Michelle Malkin cited the "estimated 23,000 workers in the deepwater drilling
industry whom the White House deliberately wrote off in pursuit of its junk
science-based drilling moratorium," as evidence of a "White House war on jobs."
Wash.
Times op-ed: "Oil workers get drilled." In an August 25 Washington Times column
titled "Oil workers get drilled: President's moratorium contributes to Gulf
economic disaster," Frank Perley claimed: "Job losses of about 23,000 are
expected during the six-month ban," but made no mention of the fact those losses
have reportedly "fail[ed] to materialize." From the
column:
Job losses of about 23,000 are expected during the six-month ban, according to a memo by federal drilling regulator Michael Bromwich obtained by the Wall Street Journal. At least 9,450 of those are oil-drilling-company employees. BP has pledged $100 million to compensate those workers, but an estimated 14,000 additional jobs serving the oil industry are likely to disappear by the Nov. 30 expiration of the ban. Businesses such as drilling-equipment manufacturers and charter-boat operations that ferry supplies to the rigs are severely impacted by the moratorium. Providing assistance to those businesses would constitute an admission that Team Obama is contributing to economic devastation in the Gulf. So those folks, evidently, are out of luck.
NY Times: "Job Losses Over Drilling Ban Fail to Materialize"
NYT: Estimates of job
losses, such as "the government's estimate of the drilling pause" to result in
"23,000 lost jobs" are proving to be "too pessimistic." In a August 24 article,
the New York Times reported that
after "the Obama administration called a halt to virtually all deepwater
drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon blowout and
fire in April, oil executives, economists and local officials complained that
the six-month moratorium would cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in
lost revenue." The Times
added:
Yet the worst of those forecasts has failed to materialize, as companies wait to see how long the moratorium will last before making critical decisions on spending cuts and layoffs. Unemployment claims related to the oil industry along the Gulf Coast have been in the hundreds, not the thousands, and while oil production from the gulf is down because of the drilling halt, supplies from the region are expected to rebound in future years. Only 2 of the 33 deepwater rigs operating in the gulf before the BP rig exploded have left for other fields.
While it is too early to gauge the long-term environmental or economic effects of the release of 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf, it now appears that the direst predictions about the moratorium will not be borne out. Even the government's estimate of the impact of the drilling pause -- 23,000 lost jobs and $10.2 billion in economic damage -- is proving to be too pessimistic.
NYT: "There are several reasons the suspension has not cut as deeply as anticipated," such as oil companies using suspension to upgrade drilling equipment and shifting operations to onshore wells. The Times reported:
There are several reasons the suspension has not cut as deeply as anticipated.
Oil companies used the enforced suspension to service and upgrade their drilling equipment, keeping shipyards and service companies busy. Drilling firms have kept most of their workers, knowing that if they let them go it will be hard to field experienced teams when the moratorium is lifted. Oil companies have shifted operations to onshore wells, saving industry jobs.
And the administration has dropped repeated hints that the offshore drilling ban will be eased or removed before it is set to expire on Nov. 30.
We couldn't have handled a second disaster at the same time, so I think that any time we have a big oil leak like this one, we should PLAN on having ALL other deepwater drilling operations temporarily stop, just like we did this time!
We also needed it to reinforce with the industry AND the public how serious the Obama Administration was to try to prevent another similar disaster from happening - the oil drilling industry needed to know that the status quo lackidaisical behaviors of the past won't be condoned anymore, and the public to regain lost trust!
And the rightwing KNEW that it was a good idea, and so, as they have so often done in the past 20 years or so, they've been trying to turn an asset into a liability! It's S.O.P. for these dishonest people who can't win if they argue with facts!
The fact that you fail to state is that the Obama administration had no ability to do anything else. They take a kneejerk reactionary stand without thinking about the possible ramifications.
P.S. Onshore jobs pay alot less $$$$. Way to stimulate the economy by taking money out of the pockets of hard working Americans.
Yes, the most recent disaster was unprecedented in magnitude but this certainly not the first environmental disaster from oil drilling in the Gulf. The 1979 Ixtoc-I well fire spilled three million barrels of oil over 162 miles of Mexican coastline. How many abandoned or capped wells are leaking or susceptible to hurricanes? No one is even inspected those wells when they were capped and certainly no agency is monitoring them for leaks.
Even the preliminary investigations of Deepwater Horizon disaster show that companies involved in drilling wells can't be trusted to police themselves. Certainly, the industry response to the disaster proves that the companies were negligent (at best) in developing technology and tactics in preparation for the inevitable deepwater well disaster.
In short, this is yet another disproval of the idea that we can rely on private industry and the free market to safeguard the environment. A temporary suspension of deepwater drilling combined with instituting proper regulatory regimes by the government is really the minimal response from a government that should be safeguarding the environment at least as much as facilitating profits for huge multi-national corporations.
You're wrong when you state that these people being temporarily assigned to onshore jobs were getting paid less.
And yeah, with ANY choice that ANYONE makes over ANYTHING where they have ANY options, there should always be a cost/benefit thought process that goes on! You do that every day when you drive to work, when you choose the route you take. And Obama did that when he decided to go with the 6 month moratorium. It was possible that some jobs would go away, and the economy of the Gulf would suffer, yet it was still the best choice he could have made, given the benefits of that moratorium! Obama would have liked to have done ONLY good for the economy at EVERY turn, but that's not always possible, given reality!
And guess what? This is what I thought BEFORE I read a New Orleans Times-Picayune article from earlier this month that supports what I said to a tee! It's an even better article, I think, than the NY Times article!
What is emerging more clearly is a distinction between the moratorium's impact on the rigs themselves and on the companies that support them.
For the rigs and their employees, there have been no reported layoffs. Drilling companies say they don't want to lose qualified workers. The oil producers have generally kept paying their daily lease rates while the rigs come in for maintenance and upgrades, even though that's work the rig owners usually must do between contracts.
Many of the oil companies are responding to recent signals that the moratorium could be lifted ahead of its Nov. 30 expiration as a sign that they should keep their equipment in the Gulf. In fact, the Frontier Driller needs a new paint job because Noble took advantage of a favorable market after the spill to buy the rig in June. Noble's chairman is talking optimistically about the company's dedication to the Gulf and promising to get right back out and drill as soon as the moratorium is lifted. Transocean's president painted a similarly rosy picture last week.
In Pascagoula, O'Neil Mendoza, Noble's project director for the Western Hemisphere and Middle East, is welcoming all the shoreside work the moratorium has allowed his company to catch up on. He said the industry is cyclical anyway, and a six-month moratorium gives rig owners a rare chance to make major improvements and meet new government safety standards while still under contract.
"The moratorium has had no impact on my outlook because my work continues to grow," he said from a trailer at the shipyard, while his workers on the docks prepared the Jim Thompson for a new helideck, a new level of accommodations with 24 new state rooms, and pre-fabricated buoyancy tanks to carry the new weight.
Without revenue, BP and others are using the downtime to work on the rigs, etc. That won't last forever and if obama listens to his radical left, the 'summer of recovery' will extend into the fall and winter.
Speaking truth to/about progressives with a shout out to madam pelosi, who was age discriminated by one of her supposed 'supporters'.
Again, we couldn't have dealt with a second spill/leak, and so EVERY time there's a spill/leak, we need to stop other drilling operations.
And until we have a better plan for dealing with these events, we need to wait. It looks to me like it's going to happen soon, but it should take as long as it takes to do the planning and preparation job right!
It's not Obama's fault that the catastrophe happened. As so often happens, the danger was there that this could happen for a long time - it didn't just become a danger on the day that the accident happened. Just like terrorists had been threatening to use planes as missiles long before 9/11, but we hadn't reacted to that threat until AFTER they actually did it. Ideally, we should have been protecting ourselves from that threat BEFORE we got hit.
How often do you see a traffic light go up at an intersection AFTER they've had a couple of fatal accidents there? But the local officials were certainly ASKED by residents of the area had been asking for the traffic light long before the accidents actually happened - without a disaster, we often don't act to prevent future disasters/accidents!
We know now that we have to work to prepare for any future disaster in the Gulf - why are you opposed to us doing that right?
Because it doesn't happen very often, we can assume that another one won't happen?
Do you know how many years it was from one major hit by a hurricane in New Orleans until Katrina? And then, just weeks later, New Orleans got socked again!
The Oil Companies SAID that they had plans to recover from a spill/leak and mitigate damage, but they really didn't. And the MMS didn't do a good job. But the Obama Administration was working to fix the MMS when this happened.
And it's dishonest to suggest that the Obama Administration had significant delays in their response to this disaster. You're lying.
Remember the countries that were willing to send skimmers and the like but the US turned them down? Possibly due to regulations to protect dock workers?
I am not lying. If George Bush had delayed, not visited, never spoke about this kind of eco-disaster for so long, or refused international assistance you guys would have called for hearings out the wazoo and sought impeachment.
Before we knew what was needed, the USA told other countries to wait until we knew what was needed! And MANY of those other countries "offers" were plans to make a PROFIT off of our disaster - you DO know that, right?
And nope, nothing was turned down in an effort to protect dock workers - that regulation ONLY affects goods, and ONLY is in effect really close to our coastline, and so wasn't an issue. But, of course, the Obama Administration clearly said multiple times that if there was EVER a need to get a waiver, it would happen virtually immediately!
You ARE lying. You're lying about the length of time it took Obama to talk about this issue, to visit this site, to send OTHERS who were the front-line people to this site, etc. Bush actually was guilty of all kinds of negligence here. Obama was not. Your accusation is a lie.
Republicans ran this country.
"Remember the countries that were willing to send skimmers and the like but the US turned them down? Possibly due to regulations to protect dock workers?"
Possibly? In fact not at all. Dock workers are not involved in offshore work. There were no such regulations. The regulations the right whined about actually apply to carrying cargo between US ports, not single port entry and offshore work. Remember, the Deepwater Horizon is not even flagged in this country.
Oh, and the US did not turn down any offer of help. The so called offers involved only one, from Mexico, for a gift. The others involved sale or lease of equipment, which was often accepted, but only after the Govt determined that the offer was really useful. While the right was whining about those other countries being refuse about 20% of the fleet working out there was already foreign. And there were plenty of boats in New Orleans willing to be out there skimming, but BP took time to set it up.
"I am not lying. If George Bush had delayed, not visited, never spoke about this kind of eco-disaster for so long, or refused international assistance you guys would have called for hearings out the wazoo and sought impeachment. "
Since this disaster was not killing people from day one, and Obama was reviewing it from day one, and there was no such refusal of international assistance, your entire argument is moot.
That second sentence of yours is a semantic and grammatic nightmare. Try figuring out what you mean to say before you say it.
Drilling safety ignored, you say? Here's this tidbit
By the way, you get the Syntax Captain award for the day! Congrats:)
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/05/17
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/05/17
Drilling safety ignored, you say? Here's this tidbit
In fact, the now-defunct Minerals Management Service had lauded BP's safety record.
At the time of the spill, BP was a finalist for the agency's SAFE award, along with Eni US Operating Co. and Exxon Mobil Corp. The ceremony at which the winner would have been chosen was postponed after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 and has allowed thousands of barrels a day of crude oil to gush from the seafloor into the Gulf."
That award was for safety aboard the drilling platform, not for the actual drilling. That part no one can examine as the only ones with the equipment were the drilling companies.
Did you forget the part where the oil companies were bribing the MMS? Or does the fact that was under Bush make it OK?
The concern here is that the oil companies will take their equipment elsewhere and allow the obama administration to devastate the economy even further by extending the moratorium on drilling.
As far as other revenue sources, imagine if your local abortion clinic has a disaster of allowing babies to live due to an equipment malfunction. The government steps in and issues a moratorium on all abortions and abortion clinics in that area, say for six months. Your local clinic stays closed to taking on new pregnancies to terminate, but the staff remains to work on making sure that vacuums are sucking properly, surgical equipment is sharp enough to tear flesh apart and acid baths are refilled. The clinic anticipates the lifting of the life ban for children in-utero but has other sources of revenue, say other countries that are more open to fetal termination.
But how long can a clinic stay open without the revenue they generate from infanticide?
At some point, the clinic owners will have to close the facility, force termination technicians into the streets and transfer their flesh vacuums to greener 'pregnancy pastures'. A sad end to that story.
Hope this clears some things up.
You are correct, drilling is part of the costs of delivering a great product that is absolutely necessary for an economy to be robust, energy.
The revenue comes from the payment for the product or bi-products themselves. 'preciate the correction! :)
You do realize that NONE of the oil drilled in the Gulf or anywhere else in the country goes directly to this country, but is sold on the open market to the highest bidder?
Have a happy! :)
And no, comparing oil drilling to your made-up scenario about abortion does not "clear things up." You don't clear things up by comparing real things to nonsensical stuff that you made up in your own head. On the day that the government actually imposes an abortion moratorium because some of the fetuses accidentally lived (a completely absurd notion in itself), you'll have a point. Until then, you don't.
Yes, just like drilling or killing, it is all about the moola that an entity can earn. And yes, if the moratorium is lifted then they will, thank goodness, continue to get oil whenever and wherever they can. Those profits will allow for the 23,000 to keep their jobs and bring us an important product that we need whenever and wherever we can use it!
As far as the 'made up scenario'.... hey joey...pssst..it's called an a-n-a-l-o-g-y.
With the possibility of causing another terrible accident, ruining the ecosystem, and thus causing even more job losses.
Now you are sounding Palinesque......"Kill, baby Kill!" is the mantra!
...
"Hope this clears some things up. "
Speaking as a firmly pro-life Catholic, I can say the only thing that clears up is your total lack of rationality.
And now he gets to count the 23,000 as "jobs saved".
But yeah, Wesley the Weasel is consistently a weasel.
The idea that the moratorium would EVER cost 23,000 jobs was nonsense, and was only fearmongering without a basis in reality.
OK then