BREAKING: Obama to Outline New Regulation of Offshore Rigs, Get "Tough" With 3 Companies

[jefferson_dem]

Sorry about the FauxNews link -

May 14, 2010 | 11:32 AM ET
BREAKING: Obama to Outline New Regulation of Offshore Rigs, Get "Tough" With 3 Companies at Heart of Gulf Oil Spill

A senior administration official tells Fox President Obama will in moments outline new permitting rules and procedures for offshore oil drilling for the Minerals and Management Service, the regulatory agency now under fire for laxity in dealing with the leaking Deepwater Horizon underwater rig and other offshore drilling projects.

Obama's remarks in the Rose Garden are scheduled for 11:50 a.m. EDT.

The official would not describe Obama's specific moves, except to say they will reflect a sped-up administration review of how MMS has been granting waivers for offshore oil and natural gas exploration.

Environmental groups have criticized MMS for giving the Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from a environmental impact study of the operation or a serious assessment of its inherent risks. That exemption was granted 11 days before the underwater exploratory rig exploded.

MMS, part of the Interior Department, has also given a light regulatory touch to other offshore projects.

The administration official also said Obama will express public frustration with the blame-shifting now engaged in by BP, Transocean and Haliburton -- the three companies involved in the Deepwater Horizon rig. Transocean owned Deepwater Horizon, but it was being operated by British oil giant BP. Haliburton was a contractor on Deepwater Horizon and built a cement oil-well casing now implicated in the oil well leak.

In testimony earlier this week before a Senate panel, all three companies blamed the other for the widening environmental catastrophe in the Gulf.

The senior official told Fox Obama will say all three companies must be held responsible for the leak and do so in language that will be "quite tough."

http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/05/14/breaking-obama-to-outline-new-regulation-of-offshore-rigs-get-tough-with-3-companies-at-heart-of-gulf-oil-spill/

[dccrossman]

1. How tough is quite tough?

I'm not only disappointed, I'm strongly disappointed. </snark>

:)

[golddigger]

2. About fucking time.

[HughMoran]

3. Good

Crack some heads.

[Clio the Leo]

4. cant wait. NT

[HereSince1628]

5. Hmmm

Off shore drilling is important to our energy independence....


There is a distinct smell of nuts in the air.

[TheKentuckian]

6. Yeah...tough as in fight tooth and nail to increase their profits while lamely wagging the finger

just like Wall Street.

Still gung ho on letting the greedheads endanger most life to put few more billion in the coffers and a few months worth of fuel in the lying bogus cover of energy independence and bullshit reform toward renewables.

[ShortnFiery]

7. Now they said that they're going to get tough ... we all must believe our government authorities ...

Especially those lauded folks in the Executive Branch. :sarcasm:

http://yorick.infinitejest.org:81/1/img/card-1984_instruction_manual.jpg http://yorick.infinitejest.org:81/1/img/card-god_petroleum.jpg

[ProSense]

9. Yes, that's the goal of financial reform: "to increase their profits"

I'm sure Al Franken agrees.

Some of the key amendments that have passed so far:

• Franken Amendment (co-sponsors Begich, Bingaman, Brown, Casey, Durbin, Grassley, Harkin, Johnson, Kaufman, Klobuchar, Lautenberg, Levin, Merkley, Murray, Nelson, Sanders, Schumer, Shaheen, Whitehouse, Wicker and Wyden): 64-35
  
  
• Merkley Amendment (co-sponsors Begich, Boxer, Brown, Dodd, Franken, Kerry, Klobuchar, Levin, Schumer, and Snowe): 63-36
  
  
• Durbin Amendment (co-sponsor Cardin, Sanders and Whitehouse): 64-33

Frankly, the Merkley-Levin is one of the most needed amendments:

Congress Likely to Toughen Volcker Rule in Reform Bill

<...>

Of the three measures relevant to the Volcker Rule, the one by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., is looking most likely to pass. It won an endorsement this week from Volcker himself, who said it should be made part of the bill.

"We have had several communications with the Merkley-Levin folks, and Mr. Volcker appreciates the hard work they are doing to preserve the intent of the Volcker Rule," a spokesman for Volcker said. "With the strong support of the Treasury, White House and Senator Dodd as well, Chairman Volcker feels very confident that these provisions will make it through the process intact and become law."

It has also been helped by Levin's recent hearings on fraud allegations at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

"The amendment I'm working on with Sen. Merkley would try to end the conflict of interest that was highlighted in the Goldman Sachs hearing, where firms create financial instruments, sell them to their clients and then bet on their failure," Levin said.

While Levin is still in the process of drafting his amendment in consultation with the White House, it would go beyond the Dodd bill by putting the Volcker Rule into statute by adding a prohibition on proprietary trading to the Bank Holding Company Act and superseding existing authority governing such activities.

link

In particular, the congressional bills would require systemically risky financial institutions to (1) pay a fee into a resolution fund for failed institutions, (2) hold less leverage and have greater liquidity, (3) restrict their risk-taking activities (the so-called "Volcker rule," made explicit in the Senate version) and (4) be subject to a resolution process if they fail, one that would resemble the FDIC's current, successful approach for taking over failed banks.

If all these requirements sound familiar, they should - because they roughly mirror the successful protections put in place for deposit insurance in the 1930s. It's a model that worked for generations.

link

WHERE DO YOUR SENATORS STAND?

[TheKentuckian]

22. Wall Street blew up in October of 08 and nothing has changed yet

He has coddled them on bonuses, renominates Bernake and twisted arms to get his votes, he has empowered Geitner to be soft and reluctant on regulation, he fought against a full audit of the Fed, and he fought against breaking up the big banks.

He is still hesitant to rein in derivatives thinking Lincoln has gone to far. He was slow to accept the Volker rule too.

After endless debacles and excess we are finally starting to address some of the issues and if we are very lucky we'll get some beneficial pieces in place to help with our economic security but there is no chance we end too big to fail so we'll never be anywhere near out of the woods but maybe we'll at least stretch the length of the bubbles.

Where do my Senators stand? Behind and in front of the bankers, like most but even more so than the average stooge. My Senators suck ass.

[Jennicut]

8. Restructuring for MMS is badly needed.

I hope we see some good changes there.

[polichick]

11. Beginning with the man at the top - Salazar. nt

[boston bean]

12. He is standing by Salazar, That was stated as plain as day. nt

[polichick]

13. Just like with Geithner and Summers - all talk, no meaningful change. nt

[GoCubsGo]

14. The corruption at MMS existed long before Salazar became Interior Secretary

Not trying to defend the guy, as I'm not a fan of his, but it's not fair to pin this on him. Some articles on what went on at MMS during the Bush Misadministration:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?_r=1
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/09/10/52243/oil-companies-gave-sex-drinks.html
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/10/rik-ethics-rules
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/investigative/documents/mmsoil-081908.pdf

I have little doubt that all the crooks in MMS were purged when Salazar got there. Or, in the rest of the Interior Department--and every other department, for that matter.

[polichick]

15. Of course Salazar wouldn't purge them - he's one of them...

Obama is all about smoke and mirrors - if he was serious about this he'd choose an environmentalist/scientist to run Interior and he'd stop lying about offshore drilling being an important part of energy independence. He knows better, on both counts - but chooses cynical political ploys over and over - and will continue if Dems let him.

[ProSense]

17. "Of course Salazar wouldn't purge them"

I wonder why?

[polichick]

18. Nothing but meaningless excuses from you - as always. nt

[polichick]

10. I'll take him seriously when he puts an environmentalist in charge of the Interior...

...and stops lying about offshore drilling making a difference to energy independence.

[emilyg]

16. +1

Till then it's more talk.........talk

[NJmaverick]

19. K&R

[hulka38]

20. It's the good political move

to announce you're going to get tough after the disaster has happened. For many here, he's not responsible for the disaster in the slightest and can actually make hay on the issue.

[NJmaverick]

24. By many are you referring to liberals and Democrats?

[hulka38]

26. Do you believe that Obama is responsible for this catastrophe to any degree?

[IndianaGreen]

21. How about killing his own offshore drilling plan, including the new nuclear plants?

And how about disclosing everything about the Big Spill?

BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

The undersea plumes may go a long way toward explaining the discrepancy between the flow estimates, suggesting that much of the oil emerging from the well could be lingering far below the sea surface.

The scientists on the Pelican mission, which is backed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that monitors the health of the oceans, are not certain why that would be. They say they suspect the heavy use of chemical dispersants, which BP has injected into the stream of oil emerging from the well, may have broken the oil up into droplets too small to rise rapidly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/us/16oil.html?hp

[Cha]

23. Of course he is.

Thanks.

[ljm2002]

25. Sounds like a good move...

...although it's not like he did it of his own volition -- his hand was forced by the disaster in the Gulf.

Now, President Obama, the next time some fat cat CEO tells you "Don't worry, we've got this", are you going to believe them? When Monsanto tells you "Don't worry, GM food is safe, and anyway even if the modified genes escape we have a backup plan to alleviate any issues" -- are you going to have a press conference where you tell us "The reality is that modern GM crops don't contaminate other crops, they have a great safety record" yadda yadda yadda? Or when Big Pharma say "Don't worry, we would never, ever make up diseases just so we can peddle dangerous medications that do more harm than good while we line our pockets with the profits" -- are you going to tell us "The reality is, modern medicines don't kill people the way the old patent medicines did" blah blah blah?

In other words, Mr. President, while this is a welcome step for this particular situation, my concern is that you have not learned the broader lesson, which is: You Cannot Trust Those Corporate Fucks.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

27. HOW CAN OBAMA DO THIS?!?! He's WORSE than Bush!!!

:sarcasm::sarcasm: