Last Wednesday, June 22, United States District Court Judge Martin Feldman overturned an Obama Administration order to halt offshore deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on grounds that the order was issued contrary to law. Judge Feldman's decision is obviously important for a variety of reasons including its impact on the overall economy, its effect on U.S. domestic oil production and for the hundreds of thousands of jobs it protects. However, the District Court decision is also important because it reveals a level of incompetence evident in this Administration that is frankly unparalleled in American history.
At the heart of the District Court's ruling is the apparent failure of the Administration to comply with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. The Act provides a framework and process governing offshore drilling for oil and gas. Pursuant to the Act, the Secretary of the Interior may provide for the temporary suspension of offshore drilling if there is a threat of serious, irreparable or immediate harm to life, property or the environment. However, the Secretary must lay out a detailed explanation justifying the action taken.
The problem with the Administration's ban is that they didn't provide any rationale to support it as required by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. Put simply, Judge Feldman's ruling states that the report done by the Secretary of the Interior lacked "…any analysis of the threat of irreparable injury or safety hazards posed by the thirty three permitted rigs reached by the moratorium." Further, Judge Feldman found that the Secretary of the Interior made no effort to justify the ban on drilling. Because the Administration failed to do the required analysis to support the ban, Judge Feldman ruled that the moratorium on offshore drilling was arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law.
What we have here is a blatant failure of the Administration to do its homework to justify the offshore drilling moratorium. They threw together a shoddy report and decided to ban deep water offshore drilling without doing the analysis required to justify the action. This is bad enough considering that the ban affects over 150,000 jobs and 31% of domestic oil production. However, it gets worse. As part of its findings, the Administration claimed that seven experts from the National Academy of Engineering supported the ban on offshore drilling. However, Judge Feldman noted that 5 of these experts now claim that they did not support the ban and that their opinions were misrepresented in the Administration's report.
I realize that the President can't swim down to plug the oil leak nor can he "suck it up with a straw" as he so eloquently stated a few weeks ago. However, is it unreasonable to expect him (and the people he has appointed) to be competent enough to get expert statements correct or to comply with basic statutory requirements before issuing administrative orders? I think not.
Every American should read Judge Feldman's ruling. It provides an example of how far this Administration seems to have sunk. Its time for the President to refocus his energies and govern the way a President is supposed to govern. The nation has serious problems demanding a competent and engaged leader. If this blatant incompetence continues, we are all in serious trouble.
Sam is an attorney currently working as a tax consultant and advisor to a variety of business clients located throughout the Midwest. He is a native of Belpre, Ohio, and a graduate of Ohio State University (B.A. Political Science) and Capital University School of Law (J.D., LL.M. Tax and Business Law). During his career, Sam has worked as in house counsel to a health care service provider and as an attorney in private practice.
