from The Wall Street Journal and The Patriot Update:
BUSINESSMARCH 4, 2011, 10:03 P.M. ET.U.S. May Reject Off-Shore Drilling Permits Due to Ruling .Text By RUSSELL GOLD
The Obama administration says it may have to reject seven permits for deep-water drilling that have become the subject of high-profile legal and political battles if a federal judge in New Orleans forces the government to make a quick decision on the applications.
In court filings late Friday, the Interior Department said the permit applications are flawed or incomplete, and that Judge Martin Feldman's order that it decide on them before the end of the month disrupts the normal back-and-forth negotiations between oil companies and federal regulators.
The government asked the judge to stay his order while it appeals his ruling, which was made in mid-February.
The appeal comes just days after the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement issued its first new deep-water drilling permit since an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon on April 20 killed 11 workers and set off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
In mid-February, Judge Feldman called the slow movement of permits "increasingly inexcusable" and ordered the government to act on five permits within 30 days. A later ruling added two additional permits.
Lawyers for London-based Ensco PLC, a global drilling company which brought the lawsuit, didn't respond to a request for comment late Friday.
The slowdown in Gulf of Mexico oil and gas drilling activity has become in recent weeks a political issue, with Republican politicians seizing on rising oil and gasoline prices to charge the Obama administration with needlessly delaying permits.
Federal offshore regulators have said they need to make sure the companies are prepared to drill safely and have adequate equipment to control an uncontrolled deep-water spill.
Separately, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board sent a letter to other federal investigators on Friday protesting their decision to end testing on a key safety device that failed to prevent the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The board, said that inconsistent test results suggested that there might be a "fundamental safety design problem" with the controls of the Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer, a massive set of valves that sat on the seafloor and was intended to shut off the well if workers lost control of it. The letter was first reported by the Associated Press.
The safety board, an independent federal agency, asked for additional testing.
Cameron International Corp., which made the blowout preventer, declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which is investigating the disaster with the U.S. Coast Guard, said the testing procedures had been agreed on in advance and no one else objected.
This isn't the first time the Safety Board has tangled with other investigators over the blowout preventer. Last year, it threatened to go to court to block testing of the device if it weren't given a larger role in the investigation.
Write to Russell Gold at russell.gold@wsj.com
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
BUSINESSMARCH 4, 2011, 10:03 P.M. ET.U.S. May Reject Off-Shore Drilling Permits Due to Ruling .Text By RUSSELL GOLD
The Obama administration says it may have to reject seven permits for deep-water drilling that have become the subject of high-profile legal and political battles if a federal judge in New Orleans forces the government to make a quick decision on the applications.
In court filings late Friday, the Interior Department said the permit applications are flawed or incomplete, and that Judge Martin Feldman's order that it decide on them before the end of the month disrupts the normal back-and-forth negotiations between oil companies and federal regulators.
The government asked the judge to stay his order while it appeals his ruling, which was made in mid-February.
The appeal comes just days after the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement issued its first new deep-water drilling permit since an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon on April 20 killed 11 workers and set off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
In mid-February, Judge Feldman called the slow movement of permits "increasingly inexcusable" and ordered the government to act on five permits within 30 days. A later ruling added two additional permits.
Lawyers for London-based Ensco PLC, a global drilling company which brought the lawsuit, didn't respond to a request for comment late Friday.
The slowdown in Gulf of Mexico oil and gas drilling activity has become in recent weeks a political issue, with Republican politicians seizing on rising oil and gasoline prices to charge the Obama administration with needlessly delaying permits.
Federal offshore regulators have said they need to make sure the companies are prepared to drill safely and have adequate equipment to control an uncontrolled deep-water spill.
Separately, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board sent a letter to other federal investigators on Friday protesting their decision to end testing on a key safety device that failed to prevent the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The board, said that inconsistent test results suggested that there might be a "fundamental safety design problem" with the controls of the Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer, a massive set of valves that sat on the seafloor and was intended to shut off the well if workers lost control of it. The letter was first reported by the Associated Press.
The safety board, an independent federal agency, asked for additional testing.
Cameron International Corp., which made the blowout preventer, declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which is investigating the disaster with the U.S. Coast Guard, said the testing procedures had been agreed on in advance and no one else objected.
This isn't the first time the Safety Board has tangled with other investigators over the blowout preventer. Last year, it threatened to go to court to block testing of the device if it weren't given a larger role in the investigation.
Write to Russell Gold at russell.gold@wsj.com
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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