US Gov't Still Approving GOM Deep Water Drilling & Suspending Royalty Payments

[amborin]

The Minerals Management Service (MMS) continues to approve new leases after the Deepwater Horizon explosion that give British Petroleum and other companies the right to drill even more deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico under the same inadequate oversight that led to the current oil spill, according to a new legal challenge filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Defenders of Wildlife. The groups say current policies create an incentive to allow drilling even in the face of evident risks because once a lease is issued by MMS, the U.S. government is obligated to pay the lessee either the fair market value of the lease or the amount spent to obtain the bid plus costs and interest if the government cancels the lease or refuses to allow drilling. MMS approved new leases for deepwater tracts as recently as June 10 under the same lax oversight complicit in the current Gulf spill.

snip

“The public needs to understand that we are subsidizing the oil companies for risky deepwater drilling,” added Catherine Wannamaker, senior attorney, Southern Environmental Law Center. “It’s the public that pays the cost of lax oversight. It’s clear BP was in over its head drilling in deep waters and now the Gulf is mired in oil.”
Although oil companies must obtain approved exploration plans and a permit before drilling a well, MMS routinely grants these authorizations through a “categorical exclusion” or waiver of additional environmental review. Thirteen new leases for BP—including four leases in the Mississippi Canyon near the site of the uncontrolled well—are among 198 new deepwater (over 200 meters or about 656 feet deep) oil drilling leases approved by MMS as past of Lease Sale Number 213 in the Central Gulf of Mexico. At least 92 lease tracts are at deeper depths than the Deepwater Horizon well, with the deepest ones nearly two miles deep or almost twice the depth of the Deepwater Horizon well.

One hundred forty-nine leases in Lease Sale Number 213 are over 400 meters deep. If wells over 400 meters (about a quarter mile) deep from this sale produce oil, the federal government will also subsidize those wells through the “royalty relief” program under which oil companies are relieved from paying the normal 18.5 percent royalty on the volume of the oil produced from risky deep water wells. The deeper the drilling, the more oil the company can recover royalty free.

Four of the tracts MMS approved for BP to lease are over a mile deep (between 1600 and 2000 meters) and will receive a royalty suspension of 12 million barrels of oil; six tracts MMS approved for BP are over a mile and a quarter (2000 meters) deep and will receive a royalty suspension for 16 million barrels. At $71 a barrel of oil, the royalty relief program would provide what amounts to a public subsidy up to $210 million for deepwater leases at that depth (2000 meters).


http://www.southernenvironment.org/newsroom/press_releases/mms_deepwater_lease_sales_to_bp_others_continues_lax_oversight_6_11_10/

[Chulanowa]

1. And this is why MMS needs its ass kicked

It's no longer an oversight and regulation agency. it's a collusion and profiteering agency.

[amborin]

2. when, though?

[Chulanowa]

3. How long do you think?

Hate to tell ya amborin, but instant gratification impulses don't mesh well with politics.

[amborin]

4. but haven't we been

waiting since Salazar took over Int Dept and said he was the "new sheriff in town?"

is the situation one that simply cannot be changed? we simply have to leave MMS alone? what would you, personally, do, if you could do something?

[Chulanowa]

5. I don't know what I would do

Because I don't know the options available. I do know that it takes a lot of time and a lot of legal wrangling to flush an entire department, and even then you might not scrape out as much shit as you were hoping. And then it can take just as long to assemble a qualified bunch of replacements, and for all I know (again, I don't know the details in this particular) each candidate has to go through a vetting process by some bunch of bought-and-paid shitheads sitting in the Legislature.

All I know is that Obama can't walk in the door, say "You're all fired, get the fuck out" and then throw in a bunch of new people.

[G_j]

7. Isn't that what Bush and Reagan did?

"..walk in the door, say "You're all fired, get the fuck out" and then throw in a bunch of new people."

[Chulanowa]

8. Reagan did it to the Air Traffic Controllers - sort of

See, they were on strike. He declared that since they weren't working, they were all fired. It's a bit of a different situation. And i'm pretty sure Reagan doing that was actually illegal, anyway.

[aquart]

6. Padlock the offices. Issue pink slips.

Anyone who can't be fired, transfer to Timbuktu or the equivalent. Start clean with hungry young lawyers, not MBAs.