Monday, July 05, 2010

No shortage of jobs for oil industry lobbyists hired to influence new safety rules and speed up shallow-water permits


(Photo of blowout preventer from Flickr and photographer Eschipul/Ed Schipul


If you’re thinking Congress and the Obama Administration will make the most logical moves to assure safe drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from now on, think again.

Big Oil is hiring well-connected lobbyists, including former U.S. Rep. Robert Livingston (R-LA) as well as ex-staff of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and others on Capitol Hill.

Six companies have formed the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition, which is clamoring for new drilling leases. They complain there is a de facto moratorium on new leases in shallow water because the Interior Department isn’t issuing new ones until revised safety rules are in place.

Interior says that isn’t so, that the last week in June they OK’d 11 shallow-water leases, 4 of which are for new wells (with the others for ongoing operations) and in half the cases rigs have moved to those spots.

Interior says shallow-water drilling can continue as long as new safety requirements are met.

But the coalition says its members have been unable to get permits and some shallow-water drillers are laying off workers. Including support jobs, as many as 7,000 people could be affected, a coalition spokesman said.

Hercules, a rig operator, and three other members of the coalition have hired not one, not two, but three lobbying firms to represent them, as well as Rudy Giuliani for advice.

Safety equipment manufacturers, including those making blowout preventers, also have lobbyists trying to affect the government’s new rules.

T-3 Energy Services, a company that makes blowout preventers and other safety equipment it sells to BP, Exxon and others, has hired a lobbyist to make sure new regulations “strike an appropriate balance,” a lobbyist told Greenwire in an email. Lobbyists working with 3-T include former aides to Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and Boehner.

BP, of course, has its own lobbyists, among them former advisors to Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), Rep. Ed Towns (D-NY) and Rep. Ron Klein (D-FL), in addition to Tony Podesta, former Justice Dept. official Jamie Gorelick and a longtime aide to former VP Walter Mondale.

Need I say more?

(Sources: Greenwire, Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition)

No comments: