BURN: Kwik Kenny Salazar's New Gulf Jobs Moratorium

The Obami's continued attack on the Gulf States took a bizarre, but predicted, turn Monday with the imposition of a new drilling moratorium.

The immediate story of what...exactly...this new moratorium is intended to do is another example of the confluence of idiot reportage, government action by ignoramuses calculated to do maximum damage while effecting the least good, and Obami running roughshod over the law.

First, the reportage; consider this--

By trying to forbid rigs that use the underwater equipment called a “blowout preventer,” Salazar is trying to link the ban to the reason for it: concerns about safety.

“I am basing my decision on evidence that grows every day of the industry’s inability in the deepwater to contain a catastrophic blowout, respond to an oil spill and to operate safely,” Salazar said in a statement.

The previous ban affected exploratory wells below 500 feet, affecting 33 rigs. The new moratorium would affect the same operations because the rigs use the undersea blowout preventers.

This tells us nothing.  Every drilling rig...on land or sea...uses a blow-out preventer (BOP).  Most work-over rigs (rigs that perform maintenance and enhancement operations on an existing well) use a BOP, too.

But if the reporting is weird, the moratorium is stranger.  It runs until November...or whenever.  What is it based on?  What will it do?  Well, Politico tell us;

It is supported, said a department statement by an "extensive record" indicating that the operations "would pose a threat of serious, irreparable, or immediate harm or damage to the marine, coastal, and human environment.”

The delay, it said, "would allow time for the implementation of new safety reforms aimed at preventing further drilling accidents."

That clears it all up nicely, don't you think?  I mean, if you asked a very highly paid boob in Washington, DC to issue a completely foggy bit of vacuity, could you ask for more (or less) than that?

Ah, but someone DID say something about this move with clarity and meaning;

“It’s a jobs moratorium,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy of Baton Rouge, who has introduced legislation to repeal the ban while calling for the safety inspection of each rig.

“You get a sense that its part of their plan to inhibit drilling one way or another,” Cassidy said.

Yes.  Yes, you do.  If you have two functioning brain cells, that is EXACTLY what you understand.  Which, apparently, leaves out the Deemocrat Ed Markey, incredibly the number two man on the House Energy and Commerce Committee;

“This moratorium will reduce oil spill risk while the Gulf will continue to produce oil,” said Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who chairs the House Energy panel’s subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. “As new laws and safety measures are put into place on these few dozen rigs, 97 percent of the manned rigs in the Gulf will still be allowed to work,” he said.

No, not really...not at all.  See, Mr. Markey doesn't know his ass from a cypress stump in the area in which he writes law.  Or he is intentionally lying. (h/t Redstate)

Out of the 123 [DRILLING] rigs in the U.S. Gulf fleet, 73 were under contract. Fleet utilization is 59.3 percent, the same as the week before. The number of rigs actually working in the region did fall to 33.

Meaning that the Gulf drilling fleet is being used at a 27% rate, thanks to the actions of the Obami.  Note that this is the lowest in the world.  That hell-hole of environmental destruction over in Europe (including the Mediterranean) has its fleet drilling at about 88% of capacity.  We all know how cavalier the Euroweenies are about safety.

A modest prediction; this moratorium is headed for the crapper.  It won't stand in court, and the people of the Gulf...and the rest of America...are apt to take the power away from Kwik Kenny Salazar to pull this nonsense.