How Obama Made His Critical Offshore Drilling Decision

[tekisui]

Source:McClatchy

WASHINGTON — Weeks before the world had ever heard of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, President Barack Obama stood in the Roosevelt Room of the White House poring over maps of oil drilling sites in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska and elsewhere.

Satisfied that he knew all he needed to know and confident that it was safe, he decided to propose expanded offshore drilling.

"This is not a decision that I've made lightly," he said when he unveiled his proposal on March 31.

"Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills," he added two days later. "They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn't come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore."

On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, setting off the largest oil spill in U.S. history. It drove Obama to freeze the proposal he'd just made.

Now an in-depth review by McClatchy reveals how Obama reached that initial decision to expand offshore drilling — and why he failed to get information that might have led him instead to delay or oppose it, and perhaps even raise questions about the deepwater drilling that was already under way.

Obama did roll back some of the offshore drilling that the George W. Bush administration had approved on Bush's last day in office. However, Obama never challenged the Bush era's fundamental faith in the oil industry or its ability to clean up a massive spill. Instead, he embraced expanded offshore drilling in part to win Republican support for broader legislation to curb climate change.

"He deserved to be more skeptical," said Stephen Hess, a veteran of four White Houses back to the Eisenhower administration and an expert on how presidents do their job.

"They hadn't thought through the various ramifications. They should have, obviously. But it didn't seem obvious at the time."

(snip)

Among their oversights:

* Obama thought that funneling information through White House "czars" such as energy and environment adviser Carol Browner would get him all the information he needed;

* He failed to drill into the government bureaucracy to test that information. He didn't, for example, ask about the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, which in 2000 had prepared a report on the dangers of deepwater drilling that proved to be eerily predictive of what happened in the Gulf. The MMS regulates offshore drilling;

* He never talked to the Coast Guard about its 2002 oil spill drill in the Gulf, or to the man who ran it, Adm. Thad Allen, who later would oversee the response to the Deepwater Horizon spill.

* He didn't reach out to outside experts, such as the National Academy of Engineering, to question claims that deepwater drilling technology was dependable.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/11/95755/how-obama-made-his-critical-offshore.html#ixzz0qZmKzSb2

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

1. Cleaning up the spill

sounds like mopping up the floor and then every things OK, it's not. This cannot be "cleaned up" and the spills effect will last for years and years. Stop dancing around the subject of who pays, we already know who will pay, it's the entire ecosystem and all of us that will pay!

[vaberella]

2. I want to know how Obama failed when he followed the advice of his ADVISORS?!

I mean did you read your post. How can the writer say that Obama's oversights are basically listening to his "czars" who are there as part of his advisory board. How is that oversight? I realize people left and right want to blame Obama for this situation, and they are grasping at every straw possible but you have to see that it doesn't make sense.

Obama can not be expected to know the ins and outs of every little detail. If that was the case he wouldn't have a head of this department or that department to speak too. He went through all the details, and he spoke to all the knowledgeable people around him who are expected to be in the know here and unfortunately this happened. But so far I don't see anything in his actions that details oversight.

In response to your points.
*The function of a "czar" is as an adviser to the President---because Pres. unfortunately doesn't know all.

*We don't know if he did or did not. However, only hindsight would be able to have protected us from this situation. Go back to the article and the statement said here by Obama, "Oil rigs today generally don't cause spills," he added two days later. "They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn't come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore." Obviously that suggests he did know about the warnings. And there are warnings for many things. However, he thought we were more advanced and things would be safer. You see his statement. <---I think only thing fitting in the article in regards to this was what was said by Stephen Hess, "He deserved to be more skeptical," However, only hindsight would have told him what could have happened. People talk as though well if he read this, he would have known. Not necessarily.

*Are you speaking about the Coast Guard's response? Beyond their response capabilities, what else could they offer? They're not engineers.

*Well he did hire Advisers who have administrator who are probably also experts in the field who were "funneling" him the information.


I think they thought through the various ramifications. However, considering no matter the situation for energy would cause some environmental risks they took it... unfortunately. I'm against this. However, again the way everyone seems to be pushing this disaster as though Obama made the the thing explode is unnerving.

[ProSense]

3. Summary: Obama developed his policy by writing on a piece of paper, "expand drilling"

How can one not be convinced by an article with this exchange:

"It was not a full-blown policy proposal," the activist said. "It was bait in the water."

"Absolutely not true," Browner said in an interview. "There was a lot of time and energy spent on this ... trying to determine what was the appropriate thing to do."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gathered information about oil drilling for a year, including public hearings in Alaska, California, Louisiana and New Jersey. More than 530,000 comments were collected.

Browner was the West Wing aide responsible for taking Salazar's recommendations and all viewpoints to Obama. She's the assistant to the president for energy and climate change, with a deep background in environmental work. She was an aide to Al Gore, the director of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration.

<...>

Browner is obviously incompetence personified.

[vaberella]

6. Obviously the OP needs to read your article as well. Lordy.

People just don't seem to realize when there are media officials out there set out to destroy this president....in everything. Shoot, maybe that's been the agenda all along of some posters on DU.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. it would have been wise not to have gone down that road

I was shocked when he said in March that he wanted to expand offshore drilling. What was the reason for this decision in March?

[impik]

5. He is a human being dealing with inhumane mess for 17 months straight

He was always going to come short on something. People can do with it whatever they want, i choose appreciate the impossible scenario he's in and to be thankful that he's the man in charge and not anyone else.

[IndianaGreen]

11. The escalation in Afghanistan was his own doing, not Bush's

His energy policy is reckless, as shown by the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe, and his support of dangerous nuclear plants and polluting "Clean" Coal.

[tekisui]

12. The blaming bush angle grows weaker everyday. If bush was so bad

the Obama Administration should have looked into his crimes and misdeeds.

[freddie mertz]

7. One of his worst decisions.

Sad.

[pscot]

8. Since there was a similar rig accident

in the South Pacific in August of 2009, it is hard for me to understand his completely unjustified confidence in the safety of deepwater drilling. The mistaken over-confidence is as egregious as George Bush's before 9-11. Thyey didn't perform due diligence. Not even close.

[CreekDog]

9. Not well

It was a bad decision. I can like Obama and think the decision sucked.

It's far easier than doing the gymnastics required to decide that his decision was a good one, or somehow defensible.

[IndianaGreen]

10. He also proposed new nuclear plants and something called Clean Coal

Every nuclear plant in the country is leaking tritium into the water table, and there is no such thing as Clean Coal.