Interior Department Halts Sale of Oil and Gas Leases

With cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill still on, the Interior Department is not in any hurry to sell new oil and gas drilling leases. Earlier this month, we blogged about the Obama administration’s intention of opening up more areas for offshore drilling. The New York Times is reporting that the Interior Department has put off plans of selling oil and gas leases indefinitely.

This month, there were to be a series of meetings on the leases, and these have been suspended too. The delayed sale of leases came as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger withdrew his support for offshore drilling off California.

All of a sudden, “offshore drilling” is a bad word. The media, environmentalists and maritime injury lawyers across the country have wasted no time calling out the oil and gas industry for the lack of safety precautions that caused the Transocean offshore explosion. It’s becoming clearer that cementing processes, blowout preventer malfunctions and a series of other factors were likely responsible for the explosion. All of these were preventable factors.

You aren’t talking about a lightweight industry that makes millions of dollars a year. The oil and gas industry is a multibillion dollar industry that continues to pump out profits for oil and gas companies and operators year after year. You’re talking about companies that have withstood the biggest recession since the Great Depression, with barely a sneeze. These are companies that can afford to have more safety aids, better designed safety devices, more numbers of personnel dedicated to safety and a gazillion other safety measures without suffering a dent in their wallets. Sadly, they have lacked the will to do so. Hopefully, the Transocean oil rig explosion and its fallout will cast a harsher spotlight on the oil industry’s safety record.