The Gulf in the Gulf: Fact and Fiction on Offshore Drilling

Last spring at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston I watched the head of the Interior Department’s office that oversees the issuance of drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico, Michael Bromwich, try to assure the audience that the Obama Administration really really is on your side.  No, really!  No one bought it.

Hat tip to my frequent collaborator Ken Green for noting the facts assembled by the New Orleans Regional Economic Alliance, which show that the Obama Administration’s claims that they are aggressively re-opening drilling in the Gulf of Mexico are bunk.

These four charts tell the story:

As Ken Green rightly says, “Regardless of the Obama administration’s claims that they aren’t hindering oil exploration and development in the Gulf, a few minutes of looking at their own data tells the real story: they’re both cutting it down, and stretching it out.”

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