Obama's moratorium costing up to $500 million per day.

The moratorium on drilling that Obama has placed on the Gulf coast is shutting down down 33 rigs. It is costing them $8.5 - $16.5 million per day per rig. That is $280-$540 million per day. That is $2.5 to $5 billion per month!! Not to mention those rigs employ 9200 workers and those jobs support an additional 46000 people such as transportation, divers, welder, supply boats and many other jobs. And they are losing about $1 million per day. So please explain to me Obamas logic in putting moratorium on drilling with those 33 rigs? That is the same logic as saying there was a plane crash so we need to stop all flights and shut down the airine industry until we can investigate this crash more. :bash

He has absolutely zero logic!! There are thousands of rigs and there has been one accident. And it would not have been such a disastor had he acted quickly to prevent the spreading of it. If anyone should be shut down it is the President. You don't put a halt to a whole industry just because of one accident. That is like stopping all people from driving everytime there is a car accident? He is such an idiot!!

We are in a recession and now he is hurting 50,000+ more jobs and costing our economy another few billion a month? Really? Who runs a country like this? He acts slow on cleaning up the mess but he sure knows how to act quick on decissions that destroy jobs and cost America a fortune. Why is he so backwards?

The sad part is that Colorado had a big part in this. Ken Salazar reccommended it to the president. They ran it past a panel of 7 engineers and 5 of the 7 said it would do way more harm than good and would hurt the economy but Obama decided to go ahead and do it anyway. Had 5 of 7 said that it would help the economy he would have decided against it. Obama has a long record of going against what the majority tell him. That is called arrogance! And why create panels and committees if you don't listen to them anyway? So basically obama is a good organizor of committees and groups and organizations but then he ignores them. Is there any sense to anything this President does?

And here is a question. Do you think it is fair for Obama to force BP to pay $20 billion to help pay for all those workers laid off because of his poor decision on this moratoium?

Ironically, the oil drilling companies are getting screwed, but OPEC can now charge more for their oil. Thank you Obama for increasing our dependence on foreign oil.

SS109 wrote: Ironically, the oil drilling companies are getting screwed, but OPEC can now charge more for their oil. Thank you Obama for increasing our dependence on foreign oil.

Like I said, his logic is wo screwed up and backwards.

He says he wants to decrease our dependence on foreign oil so he does something to force us to rely on them more.
He says he wants to lower fuel costs so he shuts down oil rigs.
He says he wants to lower unemployment, so he creates a moratorium that will cost about 50,000 more jobs.
He says he wants to help grow the economy, so he shuts down part of an industry that will cost us almost $30 billion in the next 6 months.
He says he wants to help the environment, so he refuses help for over a month to help clean up and contain an oil spill.
I think his thinking is actually dislexic. He does everything backwards!

I'm new here and I don't know you, The Viking, but I get the feeling that you're someone who would criticize Obama no matter what he did.

Do you think that we should keep drilling in light of the worst man made disaster ever recorded? Do you think we should continue with drilling using the same technology and procedures that made this disaster? Do you think we should continue without fully understanding what happened to cause this spill? Do you think we should continue drilling without a realistic action plan in place to stop another spill like this?

Let me ask you this - when the shuttle Challenger blew up, should we have stopped the program until we discovered the program or should we have just continued without understanding the reason for the disaster?

Here's another question, and please answer as honestly possible. If Obama did not issue this moratorium and we had yet another massive leak today, would you be blaming Obama for not stopping the drilling? Would you be blaming him for a second spill?

In my opinion, the pursuit of the dollar is not justification enough to risk another spill.

I agree with Scruffy. If Obama didn't do this moratorium and there were another disaster, conservatives would be calling for his impeachment (and many others would as well).

We need to understand what went wrong before we continue deep sea drilling. If it's just due to BP screw ups that's one thing. We'll need better government monitoring to insure such screw ups don't happen again.

Not that I'm an expert, but I think the failure of blow out protector needs much more understanding before we continue drilling. That was the backup which was supposed to prevent this whole mess from happening, regardless of any BP screw ups. Until we understand what went wrong, we can't risk any further deep sea drilling (existing deep sea rigs can continue to pump oil as they are now).

So far as BP paying for workers laid off due to the moratorium, or compensating other companies harmed by it, I'm not so sure at this point. If the spill was entirely BP's fault, then I'd say yes, they should pay. But if it's due to some inherent flaw in the system which all companies share, then no, they should not pay. The moratorium is a risk of doing business.

And the airline analogy isn't a complete one. If an airline crashes, we don't usually shut down all airlines. But if one crashes due to a design flaw in the aircraft then we do shut down all of those model of aircraft until the problem is resolved. And we have another example which happened during 9/11. We had four aircraft down, and we shut down ALL airlines until we were convinced there was no longer any increased risk in flying.