Linda Rozett | 202.682.8120| rozettl@api.org
WASHINGTON, July 8, 2010 – The American Petroleum Institute urged the U.S. Court of Appeals to uphold Judge Feldman’s decision to stay the federal moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling.
"The government took the proper steps to review the safety and operations of all rigs in the Gulf, following the Deepwater Horizon incident, but a blanket moratorium was a step too far," said Jack Gerard, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute. "Freezing access to an important piece of our nation’s energy supply impacts jobs and the economy in the Gulf Coast, which has already suffered from the spill, and threatens the nation’s energy security without raising or improving industry procedures."
Typically, just one of the deepwater drilling platforms in the Gulf affected by the moratorium supports as many as 1,400 direct and indirect jobs, which means as many as 46,200 jobs could be lost in the short-term because of the moratorium, according to a recent study by the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. These jobs pay an average weekly wage of $1,804, with lost wages for those jobs totaling as much as $10 million per month, per platform.
"Decisions that impact the industry’s ability to domestically produce the oil and natural gas this country needs in every sector of our economy and in every household will affect the lives of every American, every day," said Gerard.
About 30 percent of the nation's oil production and 13 percent of its natural gas production come from the Gulf; about 80 percent of Gulf oil and 45 percent of the natural gas come from deepwater wells. Following the Deepwater Horizon incident, subsequent inspections by federal regulators found no significant violations on the 33 existing deepwater drilling platforms in the Gulf.
Updated: July 8, 2010