Mourning the Moratorium

The 6-month moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling was blocked on Tuesday, allowing many offshore rigs to continue production. It also allows for new deepwater contracts for offshore drilling in the Gulf.

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman decided that a problem with one oil rig does not mean there are problems in all of them, so the moritorium was blocked.

Judge Martin Feldman’s words, according to The Huffington Post: “If some drilling equipment parts are flawed, is it rational to say all are? Are all airplanes a danger because one was? All oil tankers like Exxon Valdez? All trains? All mines? That sort of thinking seems heavy-handed, and rather overbearing.”

According to his financial disclosure form, Judge Feldman had stocks worth around $15,000 in TRANSOCEAN and also held stocks in HALIBURTON in 2008. 

At this point, his current involvement with the companies is unclear.  If he currently owns stock in these or other oil service companies, his judgement of the case should be thrown out the window.

The Obama administration plans to appeal the judge’s decision as soon as posisble. Here is Obama’s address to the people about the oil spill and his feelings about a clean energy future:

Make sure you have the volume turned up for this one; watch as an innocent bystander, on public property across the street from BP Headquarters, is hassled  by an officer to stop filming.   After he finally left, he was pulled over by the same officer. This time, the officer was accompanied by a BP representative who interrogated the man for over twenty minutes. What was this man filming? The outside of a BP building.