May 09, 2010 06:50 PM UTC

Obama Continues Bush/Cheney Policies in Gulf and Gaspatch

• 2 Comments
• by: ClubTwitty

Unfortunately when it comes to oil and gas drilling, the companies that gain from exploiting public lands and minerals still call most of the shots inside the agencies that ought to be regulating such activity in the public’s interest. People can no longer pretend that the governments instituted amongst us to watch this potentially devastating industry are doing their job.  Yet neither a change in administration nor an unprecedented ecological disaster–yet unabated–apparently can change who is really boss.  

How else to understand this article?

WASHINGTON – Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama’s vow that his administration would launch a “relentless response effort” to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday – the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling

The exemptions, known as “categorical exclusions,” were granted by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a BP exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.  [Emphasis Twitty].  

Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)if there is a ‘reasonably foreseeable’ chance that a federal action could have ‘significant’ social or environmental impacts then the responsible agency must proceed with a NEPA review to determine if such impacts do in fact exist. The determination of ‘significance’ is made in an Environmental Assessment (EA).  

If the EA finds that reasonably foreseeable impacts are not expected to be significant (before or after routine mitigation) then no further analysis is needed, the agency issues a ‘FONSI’ (Finding of No Significant Impact) and a Decision Record.  

If impacts are likely to be significant, if mitigation is unproven or insufficient, then the project must be denied or the agency is required to do a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

Traditionally it was only for some minor activities–things that have been over-analyzed under NEPA as per above, where there is no ‘reasonably foreseeable’ chance that significant social or environmental impacts might occur, where technologies are thoroughly proven, etc.–that agencies, under guidance from the Council on Environmental Quality, could take the  Categorical Exclusion as a NEPA shortcut.  

The Categorical Exclusion (CE or CX depending on the agency, each of which promulgates its own NEPA regulations) is a sensible-seeming (albeit oft-abused) device–a sort of check-list a page or so in length–that excludes certain types (categories) of minor activities federal agencies do, from further analysis.

Examples given in various agency NEPA regulations for the types of activities generally OK’d under a CE include:

Painting the headquarters; clearing some dead fall around a developed campground; repaving an already paved road along the same alignment; allowing the public to go berry-picking one season provided such had been considered the previous season; “mowing lawns at a district office…;” and renewing permits to place bee hives on public lands.  All generally inconsequential things which someone somewhere could (and probably did) argue is a ‘federal action’ and thus subject to more robust NEPA.  

The dreaded ‘analysis paralysis’ getting in the way of doing the job.  “The lawn needs mowed dammit! And some insect-lover is demanding an EIS!!!”

Agencies have always tried to squeeze as much as they can through a categorical exclusion, just as when they have to do an EA, they are likely to find–all evidence to the contrary–that no impact will be significant (so as to avoid the EIS). Less is more–more time off, more coffee breaks, more time to surf, ummmm, the internet.  

But under the Bush/Cheney regime, abetted by the GOP-controlled Congress and the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2005, the Department of Interior took the CE far beyond where it was ever meant to go, greatly expanding their use for energy development (within ‘known fields’) for both offshore and onshore drilling.  

Last year the Government Accountability Office and DOI Inspector General both issued reports blasting the shoddy use of these rubber-stamp check-lists for onshore drilling activity in various BLM offices including in Colorado.

But while the policy that expanded use of CEs for energy development may have been set up under the last administration, business under the new administration has kept apace, rubber stamps flying in spite of there being a ‘new sheriff in town’.  

If you could file a CE for berry-picking in Oregon, surely it was also appropriate for an oil well 5,000 feet below the surface off the coast of four states, waters and shore teeming with wildlife?

Or presumably–armed with the old direction courtesy of the Bush administration–that was the Obama administration’s Mineral Management Service reasoning when it exempted the Deep Horizon well from any further environment review under a Categorical Exclusion in April 2009. (The MMS is, of course, the Interior agency busted a couple of years ago for trading blow and blowjobs for sweetheart offshore deals thus screwing the American taxpayer too).

So the Gulf BP disaster can go down as another terrible example a bad idea spawned in the secretive Cheney Energy Task Force–emblematic of bad general policy that allows Big Oil and King Coal to do what they want when and how they want it–but one that is still bearing poisoned fruit today, under a new administration that now must own it.  

BP’s assurances that such a calamity was unlikely, that should such an unlikely event occur it would be miles off coast, and that if such an unlikely event occurred so many miles off coast then BP certainly had all the expertise and equipment in place to handle things, was good enough for government work.  Out came the MMS rubber-stamp: CX, CX, CX…    

This time however the stamp was wielded by a bureaucrat answering to a different boss–President Obama who, under the Department of Interior, is allowing this barely-even-minimal review to continue.

Thus two administrations are culpable–the one that unabashedly put the policy in place and the one that allows it to continue in spite of talk about change and a new direction.  If it looks like an oil soaked bird, and it floats like an oil soak bird…

The gap between the administration’s environmental rhetoric and business-as-usual in the energy fields is not limited to the rigs operating offshore.  

Now the BLM in Colorado is moving to lease 11,000 acres in the wildlife-rich North Park even as it talks up its efforts to protect keynote species such as the Sage Grouse.

The Obama administration is supporting the 2001 Roadless Rule even as it allows coal mining to move into roadless national forest areas with  little public notice or outreach, a quiet capitulation to an aged monarch.    

As it promises strict review and stewardship going forward in the gaspatch–onshore and off–the reality is things continue apace much as before.

Sensitive lands are being leased, wild backcountry is being opened for development by powerful special interests, rubber stamps are just as busy, and Big Oil and King Coal are dumping millions into political coffers and slick PR campaigns. Certainly BP had a bipartisan strategy when it came to campaign contributions, with Obama topping the list of recipients.  

The oily mess in the Gulf is on BP’s hands. But it is also on the hands of the politicians–Republican and Democratic–who abdicate their responsibility to the lands, waters and people of this nation.  

The oily mess is on the hands of those elected and appointed who let the corporations which profit from this activity set the rules, disclose (or not) potential impacts, and guard the hen house, all the while nodding back at us with sharp, polished foxy teeth: “trust us, it can’t happen here.”  And that makes all of us a little dirty too, because it keeps on and on and on.  

Until policy is shaped to protect the public interest and not the corporate bottom line, such accidents (an “Act of God” according to Texas oil man Governor Rick Perry) will continue to burden the public and planet with costs and contamination.  

The past is prologue as long as Big Oil rules the roost. Perhaps it is all best summed up by an old rocker: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss.

PS: Multiple updates…Apologies for the many versions and updates.  Clearly this was not yet ready to go when I first posted…if it ever would be.