Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium.
They argued it was arbitrarily imposed after the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers and blew out the well 5,000 feet underwater. It has spewed anywhere from 67 million to 127 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.
It is like grounding every airplane in the US because one of them crashed. If there is an imminent danger then the Department of the Interior needs to point it out. Or just write new temporary regulations that force any new deep water driller to not cut corners like BP seems to have done. In any case a retroactive punishment on companies that have stellar safety records is asinine.
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