Lifting the Drilling Moratorium: Welcomed Relief for Gulf Coast Economy

by Andres Arevalo and Joanna Kurylo

The controversial deep-water drilling moratorium imposed on the oil industry after the huge Gulf oil spill last summer has been lifted and we applaud this decision. After four months, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says tighter regulations and enforcement plus a major cleanup effort have led to a greatly reduced risk that a spill like this could ever happen again.

Thousands of jobless workers in Louisiana will surely welcome this move by the Obama administration as their industry has lost millions of dollars and thousands of jobs due to the blanket prohibition of deep-water drilling.

According to the Obama Administration, the drilling moratorium has cost about 8,000-12,000 jobs in the region.

Investigations originally reported that up to 48,000 could have lost their jobs due to the moratorium. Now that the numbers have been revised to less than 20,000, many argue that the moratorium should remain in place to ensure environmental safety, claiming that an insignificant number of job losses should not outweigh environmental considerations. This however, does not cover thousands of jobs lost in other related industries, such as a slowdown in shallow-water drilling.

Two important factors should be considered when reviewing the lifting of the moratorium. First, we must acknowledge that in light of our current economic situation, jobs should be protected at virtually any cost. Second, we must acknowledge that any job losses create a negative economic impact in all of the gulf area.

Cities such as Houma, Louisiana, which heavily depend on the oil industry, have witnessed their unemployment rates increase drastically since the May moratorium. The April 20th explosion has affected the Gulf area and caused business losses. Furthermore, the area now deals with the relocation of hundreds of workers to other areas.

In addition, local representatives of both parties of the region have called for the release of the moratorium. Critics include members of the president’s own party, including U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, who says, “[o]ur workers need to get back to work on those rigs to provide the jobs and energy security we need. If rigs comply with the regulations that are necessary to keep another BP disaster from ever happening again, they should be allowed to resume work immediately.”

Lifting the ban on the drilling moratorium allows for the creation of more jobs, perhaps filling the void that has been created by the April events. It also adds, even if only incrementally, to the widely shared national goal of relieving the United States from dependence on oil and other energy resources imported from nations which don’t share our values, interests or which wish us ill. But the bottom line here is the bottom line. As State Rep. Cedric Richmond put it: “Protecting jobs in the oil and gas industry is paramount to moving our state forward”.