Earlier this week, we filed a brief in support of a lawsuit challenging President Obama’s drilling moratorium – which puts tens of thousands of jobs at risk – and yesterday we received the welcome news of an immediate injunction lifting the ban. As the Baton Rouge Advocate reported, we absolutely do not want another spill or one more drop of oil on our coast, but thousands of Louisianians shouldn’t lose their jobs because the federal government can’t do their job of ensuring drilling is done safely.
The court said the President’s decision to suspend drilling for six months or longer was “arbitrary and capricious” and we absolutely agree. That’s why I immediately called on the Obama Administration to not appeal the court’s ruling. As WWL radio reported, we asked the Obama Administration to listen to their scientific experts who advised the U.S. Department of Interior and say a moratorium was not necessary to improve safety in the Gulf. Those experts recognize that there is an entire federal agency dedicated to monitoring safe drilling and it shouldn’t take six months or longer to ensure safety measures are in place and regulations are followed.
The moratorium has created uncertainty in our economy and based on reports about appeals from the Obama Administration, this process isn’t over yet. The Washington Post reported that the “oil companies said they would not restart costly, long-term deep-water drilling projects while the legal wrangling” continues, and that’s what we’ve been saying all along. You can’t just turn a switch on and off with these oil rigs and the longer their future remains in question the more likely they are to move their operations to another part of the world which means they aren’t coming back and neither are the jobs that support them.
Perhaps most frustrating of all is the clear lack of urgency the federal government has demonstrated to bringing the moratorium to an end. Their own commission charged with studying deepwater drilling will not even hold their first meeting until next month and they don’t expect to finish their report until next year! As McClatchy Newspapersreported, we estimate the state could lose 20,000 existing and potential new jobs if the panel takes longer than six months and with these jobs in jeopardy we cannot wait for more studies. If you have not already done so, please visit www.GEST.LA.gov to sign the Gulf Economic Survival Team’s petition against the President’s six-month drilling moratorium.
Finally, today I am landing on the sand-berms we started to build at the Chandeleur Islands to block the oil from hitting our coast. However, the federal government has shut down our dredging operations there while we wait to move to another sand site. We’ve said we absolutely want to continue dredging from the current spot while we work to make a seamless transition to the next site and have committed to refilling the original site within weeks. Instead of meeting this request, the federal government is putting red tape over the protection of our coast and stopping dredging. We are calling on the federal government today to immediately restart dredging because we absolutely cannot afford another day.
I’ve said from the very beginning that this is a marathon and that Louisiana will win the war against the oil that threatens our Louisiana Way of Life. Just as it will take the spirit and ingenuity of our people to overcome the environmental catastrophe so too will it take our determination to defeat the economic calamity posed by the federal government’s misguided drilling moratorium. Together we will see this through and win this war to protect our way of life.
Sincerely,
Governor Bobby Jindal
Tags: BP Oil Spill
