Big Oil faces new rules after disaster

Editorial - Santa Fe NewMexican.com -Environmentalists were aghast when, just this spring, President Barack Obama announced an energy initiative encouraging offshore oil drilling. Only a few weeks later, the president and the rest of the nation got a lesson in the risks of running roughshod over Mother Nature: We're still holding our breath over efforts to put a final cap on the disastrous Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf was to have been the scene of a new oil rush. Our chagrined president and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quickly put the kibosh on their own plans with a half-year moratorium on deepwater drilling. Legal battles are still being waged over that moratorium, and over the comparative safety of other rigs out there — but the ban is in place for now. Would the Deepwater Horizon have been dangerous if the federal Minerals Management Service hadn't been lip-locked with the oil companies it was supposed to be regulating — and if corporate bosses hadn't been sloppy about following the rig's safety procedures? Hard to say — but our distraught nation has an idea ... It's been clear for the past few months that Obama's people need to rid the minerals-management agency of the bribed-up, oil-cozy officials who thrived under his predecessor before even thinking of allowing any more drilling in water deeper than 500 feet. On Monday, the administration said there'll be no more fast-tracking of deepwater projects. That means an end of previous exemptions from environmental review. Yup — under a policy of leniency imposed by the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s... Read more

Big Oil faces new rules after disaster