A look at the Gulf of Mexico

From Kevin Mooney at Master Resource:

Collateral Damage: Lost Gulf Rigs from Obama Obstructionism (10 down, more to go?)

�The Gulf Spill of 2010 maybe be remembered as much or more for the economic damage it did because of the Obama�s regulatory overreaction than for the environmental damage it wrought. Two wrongs do not make a right.�

Ten oil rigs have left the Gulf of Mexico since the Obama Administration imposed a moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling in May 2010 and others could follow soon, a detailed July 2011 report from Sen. David Vitter�s (R-La.) office shows.

The ten rigs named in the document are: Marinas, Discover Americas, Ocean Endeavor, Ocean Confidence, Stena Forth, Clyde Bourdeaux, Ensco 8503, Deep Ocean Clarion, Discover Spirit, and Amirante. The rigs have left the Gulf for locations in Egypt, Congo, French Guiana, Liberia, Nigeria and Brazil.

It gets worse.

Several of the remaining rigs could be relocating soon, according to the report. These include the Paul Romano, the Ocean Monarch and the Saratoga. Moreover, eight other rigs that were planned for the Gulf have been detoured away, Don Briggs, President of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association (LOGA), points out.

�When you have companies that would be spending hundreds of millions of dollars, or some cases, billions of dollars, they need certainty,� Briggs explained. �We don�t have that now and I don�t expect that we will anytime soon. We will be in a deteriorating position until this changes.�

The EPA needs to be stopped now. Obama cannot run laws through Congress so he goes in through the back door and uses the EPA to issue draconian restrictions which the energy companies cannot comply with. Department of Energy needs to go away too -- what has it done? Nothing except mopping up close to five billion dollars (PDF - page 17 of document) of our tax money.