Demonstrating that a culture of corruption and incompetence is hard to break, the Minerals Management Service is continuing to approve offshore drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico that don't meet the new safety standards defined by President Obama. McClatchy's Shashank Bengali has the story:
The Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service has signed off on at least five new offshore drilling projects since June 2, when the agency's acting director announced tougher safety regulations for drilling in the Gulf, a McClatchy review of public records has discovered.
Three of the projects were approved with waivers exempting them from detailed studies of their environmental impact — the same waiver the MMS granted to BP for the ill-fated well that's been fouling the Gulf with crude for two months.
Bengali refers to President Obama's May 14 statement:
We’re also closing the loophole that has allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews, and today we’re announcing a new examination of the environmental procedures for oil and gas exploration and development.
Bengali:
"It's just outrageous," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation organization. "The whole world is screaming and . . . they're just continuing to move this stuff through the system."
Of the three projects that were granted waivers, two are to be drilled in deep water, one by Exxon Mobil and one by Marathon Oil. A shallow-water project by Houston's Rooster Petroleum also was granted a waiver.
Defenders of Wildlife and the Southern Environmental Law Center have launched a legal challenge to the continuing policy of approving new leases. From the SELC website (emphasis mine):
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.
"MMS quietly granted oil companies the right to drill 198 more deepwater wells as if the spill wasn’t devastating the Gulf," said Derb Carter, senior attorney and director, Carolinas Office, Southern Environmental Law Center. "If it’s too deep to stop a spill, it’s too deep to drill. BP is under criminal investigation for its explosion and dumping millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, yet MMS approved 13 new leases for BP to drill in deepwater without any better oversight."
The groups’ lawsuit challenges MMS approval of leases, including 198 deepwater leases, in the Central Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20 and ongoing spill.
Assuming that the President doesn't know these details, let's hope he soon does, because Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has some explaining to do.
continued at Daily Kos....
