Look — it’s an October Mini-Surprise!
It’s midterm-election time, the Democrats are cratering — and Inte rior Secretary Ken Salazar this week announced that he’s lifting the moratorium that the White House imposed on deepwater offshore-oil and gas drilling after the Gulf of Mexico spill.
The move came six weeks earlier than expected, and followed the promulgation of some new safety rules said to ensure against future well blowouts.
“I have decided that it is now appropriate to lift the suspension,” said Salazar, adding: “We are open for business.”
And of course it’s just a coincidence that there are US Senate races in Louisiana and Florida as Democrats fight to maintain control of that body.
As for being open for business — well, what Salazar did not say is that it will be some time before any actual drilling begins. Like weeks — and maybe even months.
And it will likely be years before drilling resumes to pre-spill levels.
Which is why Sen. Mary Landrieu, a
Louisiana Democrat who’s so furious about the moratorium that she’s single-handedly been blocking the White House nomination of Jack Lew as budget director, isn’t ready to sign on.
Indeed, she said, she’s not going to let Lew’s nomination proceed until Congress reconvenes next month — by which time “I will have had several weeks to evaluate if [this] lifting of the moratorium is actually putting people back to work.”
From the outset, the White House came under heavy criticism from area legislators for the moratorium, which idled 33 rigs and is estimated to have killed as many as 12,000 local jobs.
And a panel of experts whose views were used to justify the suspension publicly complained that their position had been misrepresented by the White House — they’d actually opposed the ban.
Back then, though, emotion ruled — and Team Obama was trying to mollify the environmental lobby.
Now it’s October; votes matter more.
But will the voters be fooled?