News that the Feds have pursued another moratorium on deepwater oil drilling has me thinking…

Why?

The first was struck down by the judiciary.  And while I understood the feelings about oil drilling in the aftermath of the rig explosion in the Gulf and the geyser leak that has since ensued, I guess I have felt that this is one instance in which the heart is in the right place, but the mind may be over-thinking it.

The oil rig explosion and this continued leak proves to us the difficulties of dealing with the “what if”/worst case scenario where a leak springs on a line that is in a difficult place to repair or reach.  Now we shake our heads as BP comes up with these oddly-named operations to fix the link (see top kill, junk shot, saw and cap,top hat, hot tap) to address a scenario that apparently few in this industry had planned for.

But the moratorium, when pursued, does nothing more but deliver some symbolic form of punishment onto the oil industry that the Obama administration can rely on as an indication that they are doing all they can to address this crisis.  And really this is one in which government intervention is completely useless, but Americans expect an overnight solution from anyway, forcing these empty policy decisions.  (See my post on Obama’s untapped superpowers)

I could see if the moratorium somehow affected the flow of oil in the deep waters of the gulf which directly impacted the flow of oil from the leak – but it doesn’t.  So again I ask,

Why?

Because Americans are angry and frustrated by the notion of powerlessness – that the US government is limited in what it can demand of British Petroleum, and that the leak has continued despite these shoddy valiant efforts to fix it.

And so the government is responding to that frustration by calling for moratoriums, because on the surface, it bans deepwater drilling, punishing those companies that do drill and sends them a message that subpar standards will not be tolerated.

But really, it does not effect the resources being thrown at the current Gulf leak, nor is it some tactical maneuver to make the current leak more manageable.   If it is going to hit people, especially economically, then it should definitely have applicability to the current state of affairs.

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