h/t Robert from oz – President Obama has stepped up efforts to sabotage Trump’s mandate from the American people, this time by attempting to mess up Trump’s commitment to open public land to oil and gas exploration.
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Obama Places Sweeping Ban on Offshore Drilling in Atlantic and Arctic Waters
by AMANDA SAKUMA
In the final stretch of his term President Barack Obama is implementing new environmental protections that stand to thwart Donald Trump’s agenda on oil and gas extraction in ways that may prove difficult for the president-elect to roll back.
The Obama administration announced on Tuesday that it will place an indefinite ban on offshore oil and gas drilling across large swaths of Atlantic and Arctic waters. The actions come in conjunction with news that Canada will implement a sweeping ban of its own, launching a set of actions to be reviewed every five years.
“President Obama and Prime Minister Trudeau are proud to launch actions ensuring a strong, sustainable and viable Arctic economy and ecosystem, with low-impact shipping, science based management of marine resources, and free from the future risks of offshore oil and gas activity,” the White House said in a joint statement with the Canadian leader.
…
The latest action hinges on a provision of the 1953 the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, a law designed to protect coral reefs and marine sanctuaries. The seldom used measure allows the executive to permanently freeze offshore drilling in specified regions. Senior Obama administration officials stress that there is no provision in the law providing the president authority draw those actions back.
Environmental groups hailed the announcement as a major victory and symbolic milestone in ending offshore drilling in a region where it is exceedingly difficult to prevent and respond to potential oil spills.
“We are confident that this is an announcement that will stick. We have both the law and public opinion on our side,” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said.
There is currently no precedent for a president to hit rewind on bans against offshore drilling in the name of environmental protections. And because the actions are not up for review for another five years, advocacy groups say they are optimistic Trump will not be able to reverse the tide.
…
Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/obama-places-sweeping-ban-offshore-drilling-n698461
I’ve never heard of such a graceless act of contempt for the will of the American people. Opening public land to oil and gas was a central promise of President-elect Trump’s campaign manifesto. Trump won the electoral college, by a wide margin.
But President Obama doesn’t care about the will of the American people – all he seems to care about is hurting the voters who rejected his legacy.
Trump will be able to overturn this nonsense, but the effort required to undo this senseless regulatory vandalism will waste Trump’s time – precious time Trump could have used to fix the US tax code, cut the Federal deficit, drain the climate research swamp, sort out Common Core, fix Obamacare, or sort out the shambolic Department of Veterans Affairs.
Ordinary people will suffer because of Obama’s spiteful attempt to thwart the will of the American people.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Mandate? Wow, is that overselling the result.
Caliph Obama only ever paid homage to one other king. And that king did not want any competition for the exports that underpinned his wealth. And Obama complied with his wished, like the willing servant of the Umma that he was…..
There is currently no precedent for a president to hit rewind on bans against offshore drilling in the name of environmental protections.
Maybe, but i cite here out of NYT
And I add: shame on Eric Worall when he writes
Ordinary people will suffer because of Obama’s spiteful attempt to thwart the will of the American people.
1. The ordinary people at best will suffer in 10 or 20 years because the shale gas industry didn’t care of environment protection.
2. The ordinary people never and never would place industry’s interest above environmental interests, would they really be informed about what happens in the Continental Shelf Lands when the oil and gas industry irremediably destroys the environment.
I think “the ordinary people” can, and should, decide for themselves what best serves their economic interests, not Greenpeace or the Sierra Club.
Environmentalists frequently like to pretend that the interests of industry and ordinary people must necessarily be in conflict when this is not actually true: Affordable energy from petroleum resources serves my interests as a consumer of energy AND ALSO serves the interests of industry that produces it for a profit. Environmental scaremongering is the tactic commonly used to create divisions and an illusion of conflict.
The executive branch enforces the law. The executive branch has “discretion” in the level of enforcement they choose to use. President Trump will determine the appropriate level of “discretion”.
By the time anyone wants to drill in these areas this “permanent action” will be just another one of Obama’s legacies in the dumpster.
Actually it’s called a Federal Court Injunction. Which would be easily granted due to the way the law is written.
The injunction would remain in force until resolved by SCOTUS, or until Trump is no longer POTUS.
You don’t know whether the “injunction” will be granted or not. Most courts would look at a “lame duck” action by a president that can’t get his agenda enacted by the public’s representatives in congress, and decide not to “easily grant” the request. If you want to pass laws go through the proper channels. This back-door legislation, can be just as easily kicked out the back-door. That is why we have separation of powers. To limit this abuse of power. The courts are the group with the most to lose if we amass more power in the Executive branch.
Why is the incumbent given two and a half months in office AFTER the November election during which to spike the incoming presidency if it is of a flavour he/she dislikes? This makes no sense, and is the real problem here. The USA should change to the UK election schedule where the winner starts in office the morning after the election night.
The date of the beginning of the Term of Office is Constitutionally Mandated — meaning another amendment would be needed to change the date.
Statute sets Election Day, and for the reason cited above, no candidate wants to campaign over the Christmas Holidays.
So fat chance it gets changed.
Not to mention the gap allows for transition between Administrations.
There are approximately 4000 appointees that serve at the pleasure of POTUS — about 1400 must be confirmed by the Senate.
I think that some of the timing, dates and so forth, go back to the times they were put in place.
(It took awhile for a horse to travel from Georgia or New Hampshire to the capitol.)
It was 1937 the 20th Amendment to the Constitution for Presidential terms– there were cars, trains, and planes.
1948 for Election day USC 3 S 1
err 1933 for the 20th Amendment
Karl, thank you for that.
One would think that a candidate would have got a jump on things. As we see — that isn’t necessarily even close to the truth.
The will of the American people? Stopping drilling in the arctic is the will of this American person. Go Obama!
Ordinary people have suffered in America for eight years under Obama’s spiteful rule and his thwarting of democracy, rational thought, and economic sense. A few more weeks of his insanity cannot add a great deal to the damage that he has already caused. Trump will move fast to fix it as he will not spend most of his time on the golf course.
I can see Att-Gen Sessions sitting down with Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, and Rick Perry to plot how to make all these new rules go away on Day 1.
This means little beyond the fact that the US will more aggressively pursue fracking, especially in areas like west Texas and North Dakota where the extraction process is still cheaper than in the hostile environment of the Arctic. In addition, Trump can push for the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline because if he still has to rely to some degree on foreign oil, what better source than Canada, particularly since its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau favors the project. So the ban is merely another hollow victory for the Greens who can’t recognize a losing battle even when it’s staring them in the face.
The Greens fund raise on battling “the man”. If they declared the battle lost, the greenbacks would stop. So, they will never declare defeat.
Several new offshore discoveries in the past few years have given Alaskans new hope that the TAPS line can be kept running, thus keeping going the flow of oil royalties that each resident gets yearly (about $2000 iirc). If the pipeline dies, the state’s finances go dead and Alaska will possibly be a red state forever after.
To have a mandate from the people of the USA, would Mr Tump not have to have recieved a larger proportion of the popular vote than his rival in the recent election of the electoral college?
in 49 states he won by 3 million votes … the will of California and NY should not override the rest of America …
Only hurts the US + Canada – they’ll have to buy from Putin and the Saudi.
Maybe american oil workers will hire abroad, Obama does no favor to America.
While the legal discussion is interesting, my opinion of the logic is a bit different. In my opinion we are now involved in WW4, a war we are losing, the most significant victory to date has been the success in causing the price of energy to decline and harm our opponent. Keystone and the ND pipeline will add further downward pressure on oil and nat gas prices, downward pressure the North American producers will find difficult but we can adapt to, our opponents much less so. Obama’s efforts are aimed at helping our opponents plus making the ignorant greens happy. That’s my opinion from observing Obama and thinking of his life story.
everyone does realize that what he did was withdraw those lands from being offered for lease …The US Government can hire anyone it wants to drill on those same lands … in other words the US Government still holds the drilling rights on those lands (Obama withdrew those rights from being leased) … doesn’t mean we can’t “hire” companies to drill 🙂
Arctic sea ice extent is surging, after going sideways for a few days, to the delight of trolls here.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
However, it won’t enter the normal zone this month, as I thought possible. It is close though and should cross over in January.