Department of Natural Resources Secretary Scott Angelle and members of the Back to Work Coalition are meeting Friday with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Michael Bromwich and his staff in Washington, D.C. to work through the permitting and regulatory issues faced by the exploration industry in the Gulf of Mexico.
Angelle is the state’s liaison between the offshore oil and gas industry and the federal government. Through the establishment of the Back to Work Coalition, a group of industry representatives facilitated by the Gulf Economic Survival Team, Angelle is presenting a unified voice to Bromwich and BOEM officials and hopes to create a clearer roadmap that will resume Gulf of Mexico exploration.
Friday’s meeting with BOEM is the third in two weeks, Angelle says, and “should bring meaningful dialogue to the permitting situation and be another step toward a clearer understanding of BOEM’s requirements. It’s all hands on deck, and we are hopeful that BOEM will respond favorably to our recent requests to revise the Interim Final Drilling Safety Rule in order to provide an enforceable mechanism for ensuring that operators are incorporating the most appropriate safety practices to their drilling activities.”
Despite the Oct. 12 lifting of the moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico’s federal waters, permitting for new exploration and production is at a standstill, with only two new permits issued that were not subject to the moratorium.
“Friday’s meeting will focus on the top three obstacles that are hindering the industry’s ability to comply with permitting requirements,” says Angelle. “Following a resolution on these items, we look forward to seeing the rate of permits issued increase, followed by the restoration of the industry in the Gulf of Mexico and the thousands of jobs it supports along the coast.”
According to Angelle, the three top issues include timely completion of newly required environmental assessments conducted by the federal government; clarification on requirements for industry’s Oil Spill Response Plans, incorporating the progress being made by the Marine Well Containment Company and by Helix Energy Solutions Group; and a revision of the recently released Interim Final Drilling Safety rule.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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