Federal District Court Judge Martin Feldman on June 21 said he would rule soon on the US Gulf deepwater rilling moratorium and appeared to be leaning toward invalidating it.Feldman said he would rule by June 23, and possibly as early as noon June 22, on a motion to declare the federal offshore moratorium on deepwater exploration drilling unenforceable. Hornbeck Offshore Services, joined by Bollinger Shipyards, Bee Mar and other offshore support companies, filed suit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on June 7 asking that the court order the US Department of Interior to lift a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. The moratorium was ordered by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to allow time for safety measures on deepwater rigs to be put in place. I know these issues raise deep emotions on both sides, Feldman said as he concluded the hearing June 21. In his questions, Feldman was critical of the government s arguments that a moratorium is necessary to ensure the long-term safety of the offshore industry. Did the administration keep tankers out of Alaska after the Exxon Valdez? Train crossings are dangerous, why shouldn t train crossings be shut down? Feldman asked the government at one point. Why not a year? Why not three months? he later asked an intervening attorney. He asked the rationale for the moratorium because, according to the government s own report, blowouts are rare, with only three or four since 1969. Guillermo Montero, the lead attorney for the federal government, answered that the Department of Interior is not comfortable with the current regulations. The Deepwater Horizon was a game changer, he said. As anexample, he said, Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon, had a stellar record under existing regulations. Inspection protocols have to updated to increase the margin of safety. With time and new regulations, next time, God forbid there is a next time, it won t be 62 days and counting until the problem is fixed, Montero said. Never before has the government, with the stroke of a pen, shut down an entire industry for six months, plaintiff attorney Carl Rosenblum argued in his closing arguments. He said that safety measures called on by the government can be implemented without shutting down deepwater work. Plantiff attorney John Cooney argued that there is no rational connection and no facts to support the moratorium. Inspections conducted on deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico following the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon found no major problems aboard the rigs.
