Ken Salazar Cheats Drilling Report: Drilling Moratorium May Prevent US to Drill for Years

Obama's Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, changed a critical report on the safety of drilling for oil in deep water environs. He cheated. A panel of experts "peer reviewed" Salazar's report and signed-off at the 'final' review. That final review report did not recommend a drilling moratorium. Never mind, Ken Salazar just changed it to suit his and Obama's ideological viewpoint (Obama was in on it) - which is to call for a moratorium on existing and new drilling permits. Most surprising, however, is the information that if a moratorium happens, the floating rigs will be moved to other places around the world and may not be available to the U.S. "for years." That's not all, the moratorium may be worse for the economy than the moratorium itself.

Ken Salazar Makes Cowboys Look Bad - Salazar Cheats

The 'experts' did not call for a moratorium, they actually opposed it:

The experts, recommended by the National Academy of Engineering, say Interior Secretary Ken Salazar modified their report last month, after they signed it, to include two paragraphs calling for the moratorium on existing drilling and new permits.

 "None of us actually reviewed the memorandum as it is in the report," oil expert Ken Arnold told Fox News. "What was in the report at the time it was reviewed was quite a bit different in its impact to what there is now. So we wanted to distance ourselves from that recommendation." 

Salazar apologized to those experts Thursday.

They also said that because the floating rigs are scarce and in high demand worldwide, they will not simply sit in the Gulf idle for six months. The rigs will go to the North Sea and West Africa, possibly preventing the U.S. from being able to resume drilling for years. 

Salazar implicates Obama, saying "It was my decision and the president's decision to move forward." In the cunning language of this administration, "move forward" means doing something completely against the will of the people.

In the wake of the oil spill, President Obama asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to produce a report on new drilling safety recommendations. Then on May 27 Mr. Obama announced a six-month deep water drilling ban, justifying it on the basis of Mr. Salazar's report, a top recommendation of which was the moratorium. To lend an air of technical authority, the report noted: "The recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering."

 The seven experts doing the "peer review" said this:

"The Secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct, but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions," wrote the seven in a letter to Gulf Coast politicians.

The seven noted that they broadly agreed with the report and had even signed off on a proposal to suspend new deep water permits for six months. They also agreed to a "temporary pause" in drilling to perform additional testing on the Gulf's 33 deep water wells that have already received permits to drill.

But as for a "blanket moratorium," the seven said it "is not the answer. It will not measurably reduce risk further and it will have a lasting impact on the nation's economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill." If anything, the ban could prove "counterproductive to long term safety."  In a letter, the "seven experts" encouraged Salazar to "overcome emotion with logic." We have a clown troupe in the White House.