When even the New York Times notices Barack Obama’s ban on all offshore drilling is unreasonable, he has a serious problem.More troubling, Barack Obama wants British Petroleum to pay for the losses rig operators are suffering because of his imposed ban. Does anyone really think they are reasonable for that? Seriously? More importantly, will the trust operator?Probably not.Obama is promising a bag of goods to people who are now out of work because he overreacted after underperforming for so long. He’s also trying to stick the cost on British Petroleum, a company that had absolutely nothing to do with this particular tragedy.That won’t hold water and taxpayers will be left to foot the bill.When even the New York Times notices how screwed up Obama overreacted, he has problems.
The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association has warned that many of the affected rigs will seek to drill in other countries, imperiling roughly 800 to 1,400 jobs per rig, including third-party support personnel.The securities firm Raymond James & Associates predicts that the moratorium could last well into 2011, directly jeopardizing 50,000 jobs and potentially gutting blue-collar communities that rely heavily on the economic activity that comes with deepwater work. “Just as the demise of auto plants and steel mills in the Upper Midwest devastated entire towns, an extended drilling ban could eventually have a similar effect in the Gulf Coast,” the company said in a report Monday.
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