Advisers Cited By Salazar Say Drilling Ban Is Bad Idea

quote:

---

Members of a panel of experts brought in to advise the Obama administration on how to address offshore drilling safety after the Deepwater Horizon disaster now say Interior Secretary Ken Salazar falsely implied they supported a six-month drilling moratorium they actually oppose.

Salazar's May 27 report to President Barack Obama said a panel of seven experts "peer reviewed" his recommendations, which included a six-month moratorium on all ongoing drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet. That prohibition took effect a few days later, but the angry panel members and some others who contributed to the Salazar report said they had reviewed only an earlier version of the secretary's report that suggested a six-month moratorium only on new drilling, and then only in waters deeper than 1,000 feet.

"We broadly agree with the detailed recommendations in the report and compliment the Department of Interior for its efforts," a joint letter from the panelists to various politicians says. "However, we do not agree with the six month blanket moratorium on floating drilling. A moratorium was added after the final review and was never agreed to by the contributors."

---

quote:

---

The experts' criticism of the moratorium and effort to distance themselves from it come as oil production companies prepare to move mobile deepwater rigs out of the Gulf of Mexico, threatening thousands of jobs in Louisiana that support those drilling operations with supply boats and shoreside services.

"A blanket moratorium is not the answer. It will not measurably reduce risk further and it will have a lasting impact on the nation's economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill," the letter says. "We do not believe punishing the innocent is the right thing to do."

One of the panelists who signed the letter, University of California at Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea, said in an e-mail message that a moratorium should be reserved for "unconventional, very hazardous operations" and shouldn't apply to the "majority of conventional offshore operations, (which) meet fundamental requirements for acceptable risks."

"Moratorium was not a part of the ... report we consulted-advised-reviewed," Bea wrote. "Word from DOI (Interior Department) was it was a W(hite) H(ouse) request."

The National Academy of Engineering provided seven reviewers for Salazar's safety report, and the academy's Ken Arnold, an oil and gas industry consultant, wrote a scathing cover letter Tuesday that concludes: "The Secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct, but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions."

---

quote:

---

"We were very upset," Ward said. "We would have understood if (Salazar's report) said, 'These are good recommendations from the panel, but we have decided to declare a six-month moratorium instead.' But instead, they're kind of using our input for cover to do something that didn't have much to do with our recommendations."

The panelists said even Salazar's report clearly shows the deepwater safety record is generally strong, making the moratorium all the more puzzling.

---