BP Horizon spill still harming Gulf residents

The BP Horizon spill may be capped--finally--but the economic harm remains. In the Houston Chronicle today, Michael Economides writes:

The moratorium imposed by President Obama immediately after the spill has already cost our nation an estimated 20,000 jobs. Continuing to punish all producers for BP's sins will further decimate domestic energy production, curb economic growth, and endanger U.S. energy security.

This morning the president's national commission on the spill began. Thomas Clements, co-owner of Oilfield CNC Machining LLC in Broussard, Louisiana will be there to present his view of the ongoing financial devastation in the Gulf.

Here's a preview, from Human Events Online:

In national publications like The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Politico, and my local Louisiana paper, I continue to read about the thousands of jobs and billions in economic activity bleeding from the Gulf region. The recently lifted 'official' moratorium and the continued stoppage in offshore oil and gas production—the result of a permitting process that is purposefully restrictive—seems to have a broad effect. But these numbers are so incomprehensibly large and arbitrary that they have lost most of their meaning. The number that I am most concerned with is much more straightforward: 50 percent. That figure represents the decline in business I have experienced as the result of far-reaching and economically destructive policies that continue to spill out of Washington long after BP’s well was capped.

To small companies like mine that rely heavily on oil and gas industry demand to fill work orders, which allows job growth here in Louisiana, there are only two relevant periods of business: pre-moratorium and post-moratorium (and this is coming from a state that has had to contend with Katrina and its aftermath!). Pre-moratorium represents a period of growth, potential, and optimism. Post-moratorium is a much darker period of lay-offs, stress, and sleepless nights for my wife and me. Next week, the symbol representing the start of this Dark Age will be the main focus of an Oil Spill Commission panel hearing in Washington D.C. focused on assigning blame for the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

While it is very important to reveal the technical flaws that caused this incident in order to hold the responsible parties accountable, for industry insiders the cause is clear. BP's reputation has long been the subject of safety concerns by energy industry participants in Louisiana and across the Gulf states. From their horrible track record as a safety outlier in Texas, where a refinery explosion killed 17 employees and injured 170 others, to their complete disregard for safety rules, leading to 800 "willful and egregious" safety violations cited by OSHA, they are the exception in the industry, not the rule. What's not clear is why I and others are being punished for another’s mistakes.

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