Obama Reverses Course on Offshore Drilling

The administration's drilling moratorium is killing job growth. But the mandarins at NYT are down with that: "They Haven’t Learned."

Ah, those were the days, last March:

And from PhysOrg.com, "The recently announced seven-year moratorium on offshore drilling is yet another example of the short-sightedness of the US Department of the Interior, says John W. Kindt, a professor of business and legal policy at Illinois and expert on marine pollution":

The Obama administration's decision to maintain a ban on oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts is a mistake, according to a University of Illinois expert who wrote a six-volume book series on marine pollution.

"It's a ridiculous decision on the part of the Interior Department," said John W. Kindt, a professor of business and legal policy at Illinois. "The previous 180-day moratorium really hurt a lot of businesses. Well, a seven-year ban is going to sting even more."

Kindt says giving the oil companies a public spanking through a seven-year ban isn't going to solve our energy problems, and that unreasonably prohibiting offshore drilling will not only exacerbate the region's economic woes, it also will strengthen U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

"Our motto should be 'Drill, Baby, Drill' but 'Safely, Baby, Safely,'" he said. "We have two wars in the Middle East, and while we do need alternate sources of energy, in the interim we still need to safely develop our off-shore resources. That means we need to open up both the East Coast and California for drilling, although California is not going to like that. But we've got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time."

According to Kindt, the author of "Marine Pollution and the Law of the Sea," a six-volume series that examines protecting the world's oceans while encouraging development of essential resources, the real villain in the new contretemps is not BP (formerly British Petroleum), but the Department of the Interior, with the recently announced seven-year moratorium serving as yet another example of what he says is the department's shortsightedness and incompetence.

"The real issue is the Interior Department, which is the most scandal-ridden agency in American history," he said. "Along with an inability to regulate, the entire department is rife with conflicts of interest, which came to light during the BP fiasco when Interior Secretary (Ken) Salazar was making statements to the effect of, 'We've got our heel on the throat of BP.' Statements like that were just a way to divert attention away from their own inadequacy."

Another reason to get Sarah Palin in there.

See also Intellectual Conservative, "Nice Oil Business You Got There..."

RELATED: At Wizbang, "Nation's poor feeling the sting of Obama's war against fossil fuels."