[StBernard] A Necessary Moratorium

[Westley Annis]

A Necessary Moratorium

Last Thursday's fire on a shallow-water oil production platform in the Gulf
of Mexico claimed no lives and has caused no environmental damage. It was,
however, a nerve-racking reminder that extracting fossil fuels is an
inherently dangerous business. As such, it was a very good argument for
maintaining the present moratorium on deep-water drilling in the gulf and
removing it only when industry has met the standards the administration set
forth in the spring. 

President Obama imposed a six-month suspension on deep-water drilling in the
gulf on May 27, one month after the BP oil spill. On the same day, Interior
Secretary Ken Salazar published a set of detailed safety and engineering
conditions that industry must satisfy before drilling could resume. These
included specific requirements for state-of-the-art blowout preventers - the
equipment that failed on the Deepwater Horizon rig - a host of other
safeguards and a demonstrable capacity to respond to major accidents. 

This was a high bar, and it was clear that it would take time to meet it.
Even so, pressure to end the moratorium began almost immediately and has
continued to build, from gulf state politicians and from industry, both
warning of imminent economic disaster. 

The administration has rightly resisted these entreaties. Two recent
articles in The Times help make the case for patience. An article on Aug. 25
said that no economic meltdown occurred. The number of lost jobs can be
measured in the hundreds, not thousands, oil production is down modestly and
the widely feared exodus of drilling rigs has not materialized. All but two
of the 33 deep-water rigs drilling in the gulf before the BP explosion are
still there, many with standby crews. 

The situation could obviously deteriorate, but at present there appears to
be no persuasive economic reason for the administration to shift course. 

The second article, on Aug. 30, reaffirmed a basic truth about the oil
business. The really big discoveries, in the gulf and elsewhere in the
world, will almost surely be made in deeper and deeper waters, in turn
requiring ever more complicated rigs. And as the rigs get bigger and more
remote, the risks will grow. This in turn argues for learning as much as we
can from the BP spill about how to build in multiple safety barriers, making
sure that the technology to prevent and contain spills is as sophisticated
as the technology used to tap new fields. 

One official who will have much to say about when and how to end the
moratorium is Michael Bromwich, a former prosecutor called in to reform the
Interior Department's agency that was supposed to conscientiously regulate
offshore drilling but didn't. Mr. Bromwich is on a fact-finding tour to
guide the administration's decision and will report to Mr. Salazar this
month. 

Before he does, he should try to resolve one important and largely
unexplored question: When the administration lifts the moratorium, should it
do so selectively or all at once? A month ago, Mr. Bromwich told reporters
he did not feel comfortable with a rig-by-rig approach because it could open
up charges of favoritism. 

He might think again. An excellent report from the Bipartisan Policy Center,
a Washington think tank, argues that the moratorium was in a sense a blunt
instrument because not all rigs were as carelessly managed as the Deepwater
Horizon. Lifting the moratorium for everyone would be equally
undiscriminating, the report suggests, since some rigs may quickly meet the
standards while others may take months to comply. 

The report - which strongly endorses the administration's standards while
adding useful wrinkles of its own - suggests meticulous rig-by-rig
inspections by government and third-party investigators. This strikes us as
an essential condition of allowing drilling to resume, the only foolproof
way of ensuring that industry has learned the lessons of the BP disaster.