Deepwater Drilling Ban Lands Interior Department In Contempt Of Court

NEW ORLEANS — The federal judge who struck down the Obama administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling after the Gulf oil spill held the Interior Department in contempt Wednesday, and ordered the federal agency to pay attorneys' fees for several offshore oil companies.

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman chided the department for its "dismissive conduct" after he overturned the agency's decision to halt any new permits for deepwater projects and suspend drilling on 33 exploratory wells after the Deepwater Horizon blast, which killed 11 workers and triggered the massive spill.

After Feldman overturned the government's moratorium in June, the agency issued a second nearly identical suspension.

"Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the reimposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government's contempt of this court's preliminary injunction order," he wrote.

A magistrate will consider how much the companies' attorneys should get.

An Interior Department spokeswoman wouldn't comment. A lawyer for the companies hailed the ruling.

"We're obviously delighted with the court's recognition of the government's manipulation of the judicial review process," said Carl Rosenblum, an attorney for Hornbeck Offshore Services and other companies that sued over the first moratorium.

Rosenblum said the companies haven't asked for a specific amount and aren't trying to profit.

"The end game has always been to put people back to work," he said.

Feldman also is presiding over a separate case challenging the Interior Department's second drilling moratorium. That suspension was lifted in October, but the agency was sued by other offshore oil companies that want the permitting process to be quickened.

Last month, however, Feldman refused to order the government to move faster. The judge said it's unclear whether the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management must approve or reject drilling permit applications within a specific time.

Comments

[Almondo]

02:47 PM on 02/05/2011

Ethically void.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/6/26/879462/-The-Despicable-Judicial-Ethics-of-Judge-Martin-Feldman

[martinfrosa]

12:59 PM on 02/04/2011

Rule of law for thee, but not for me.

[mamacat]

09:31 AM on 02/04/2011

Another GOP activist judge, doing the bidding of his masters.

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

02:11 PM on 02/03/2011

I thought Obama was some kind of Constitutional Law expert. Instead, his Interior Department goes ahead and defies the court. No surprise here, He doesn't enforce immigration laws, he still hasn't stopped implementing Obamacare despite the recent Federal Court ruling the entire bill is Unconstitutional. he is only an expert in usurping the Constitution.

[Almondo]

02:48 PM on 02/05/2011

He shouldn't be on the bench, he should be in jail.

http://slabbed.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/oil-spill-feldman-2.pdf

[marywooo]

12:12 PM on 02/03/2011

so what? a fed judge just ruled obamacare was unconstitional..Omama could care less.

[carmemirandashat]

12:02 PM on 02/03/2011

Can you say conflict of interest? Feldman is a stockholder in TransOceanic. If you recall, they had a small part in the Deepwater Horizon booboo. It is a little silly (there are better adjectives out there so use your own) for a conflicted judge to call anyone or anything in contempt when his issues are much greater.

[media4me]

11:53 AM on 02/03/2011

Prez Obie is happier with the 3 bucks plus per gallon gas prices.

[carmemirandashat]

12:06 PM on 02/03/2011

Sorry pal, the price of gas is never going down. There are bigger potential markets out there so guess what, patriotic Big Oil is going where they can reap the biggest profits. It is, for the teabaggers, the free market in action. Thus, you cannot complain just because it is disadvantageous to you.

[media4me]

12:15 PM on 02/03/2011

Oh....It's big Oil's fault.
I forgot.

[Chris]

12:28 PM on 02/03/2011

Now it is the free market in action. For 8 years it was the President Manipulating the price for his oil cronies.

Wonder why the change in attitude?

[realpolitic]

11:50 AM on 02/03/2011

Feldman apparently thinks the Gulf was not polluted enough with the recent debacle and would like to see more of the same.

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

02:12 PM on 02/03/2011

This is about the rule of law, not the environment.

[realpolitic]

02:16 PM on 02/03/2011

So where does it say the rule of law and common sense must be two different things?

[Almondo]

02:50 PM on 02/05/2011

It is about the rule of greed, not law.

http://blogs.chron.com/newswatchenergy/archives/2010/06/judge_who_overt.html

[miloiki]

11:00 AM on 02/03/2011

What? A challenge to Emperor Obama and his royal decree? Does this judge not realize that Obama can do anything he wants? Congress? Who are they?

[GreenKate]

10:34 AM on 02/03/2011

Of course industry's end game is to put people back to work. And they created 11 new jobs!
Replacing the dead workers.

[NickGranite]

12:24 PM on 02/03/2011

That's 3 million and 11 more than Obama created if you take in account he's negative 3 million.

[damnedgentlemen]

11:00 AM on 02/04/2011

I see you got Dick Cheney's latest book, "The Totally Factual Fact Book of Facts for People Who Never Question What I Say".
I heard you get free cigarettes if you buy it from SarahPAC.

No one but a zealot would assert that Obama lost jobs that were gone before his hand touched the Bible in Justice Robert's hands.

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

02:13 PM on 02/03/2011

No, the workers and the rigs went offshore in South America.

[eagle17765]

09:44 AM on 02/03/2011

July 2010 Federal Judge Big Oil Feldman ruled the "the Interior agency must ‘cogently explain why it has exercised its discretion in a given manner,’”

Now that they've done just that - the Big Oil Judge finds them in contempt ... Feldman is not a WHUR - Feldman is a paid Pr0stitute.

[Mister Bill]

09:23 AM on 02/03/2011

Those who will not learn history are doomed to repeat it. Somebody in the Presidential circle should start reading about some of the preceding Presidents, especially some of the one's that the President admires. "The great struggle between the President and the Supreme Court in 1937 stirred the national emotions to unusual depths because it brought Franklin D. Roosevelt’s crusade against depression into collision with one of our most hallowed traditions." By MERLO J. PUSEY "The rude awakening from this illusion came early in 1935, when the Supreme Court invalidated the National Recovery Administration’s petroleum code as an unconstitutional venture into executive law-making" Does any of this sound familiar? Refer back to FDR's humiliation in your history books.

[Jim Shaffer]

09:23 AM on 02/03/2011

Your tax dollars at work. What a waste, to top it off to have to pay their legal fees! No doubt our government is owned, with foolishness like this going on, it seems obvious. Meanwhile, BP is using all their influence to obstaculize the payoff of deepwater horizon compensations, and paying dividends to it's shareholders at the same tme. Unregulated america is heading straight for anarchy, the corporate oligarchy is blind to the fact they're destroying the economy they wish to take control of.

[Mister Bill]

09:34 AM on 02/03/2011

At the same time the Administration (that's us) are borrowing money to give to Venezuela to drill for oil to sell to us. We do not get any taxes from the workers employed there. We do not get any taxes from the sale of the oil. The only thing we get is the redistribution of wealth from our Country to our enemies. Why are we financing our enemies with money borrowed from our enemies?

[eagle17765]

09:46 AM on 02/03/2011

At the same time EVERY President has always giving BILLIONS to Big Oil to drill for oil in the USA to sell back to us ... Oh, and Big Oil - they pay little to ZERO in Federal Taxes and ... they do NOT hire US citizens.

[MIGUEL BUSTAMANTE]

07:06 PM on 02/08/2011

Thanks Jim, your post inspired me to create an account on the HP today. I saw your use of an unfamiliar word, "obstaculiz­e." So I looked it up on m-w.com and google too. I can't find it anywhere. In fact, as I am writing this reply the spell checker has red lined it as misspelled. Which means it was red lined when you were composing this brilliant post too. How "blind" does one have to be to refer to America (notice how I capitalize the a and you don't) as unregulated? I love how you Libs try to change our language so that cold is hot and non-commerce is commerce.

[Jim Shaffer]

04:22 AM on 02/09/2011

Sorry about my 'liberal' use of the language, but I'm no liberal. I spend my day speaking spanish, my spell checkers set to spanish and I don't bother with it. You're right about one thing though, it doesn't matter how many regulating agencies there are in america (with a small 'a') because the industries regulated by the US government are just as owned as it's congress, supreme court, and the POTUS. That's why I'm no liberal/democrat or a conservative/republican. Because it's all a lie, a farce, a sham...
Me alegro de haberte inspirado apuntarte a Huffpo, pero das la impresión de trabajar para 'big oil'..

[ausmth]

09:12 AM on 02/03/2011

$5 gas. Just what lil'0 needs to be re-elected.

[Mister Bill]

09:35 AM on 02/03/2011

$6.00 gas. Just what lil"O needs to be sent packing back to Chicago for "Social Justice"

[AlonzoQuijana]

09:05 AM on 02/03/2011

Not well reported is that almost all exploration -- deepwater or not -- is shut down thanks to extremely, deliberately slow Interior Department approvals process. Hence, companies like Transocean are sending rigs to other countries. Given the long lead times and a finite number of rigs, it will be years before we can get those back.

I suppose we can make up for the production shortfall by switching to electric cars (ultimateley powered by coal and nuclear power plans), installing made-in-China solar panels or importing yet more oil from OPEC or from tar sands in Canada.

[ThinkCreeps]

09:17 AM on 02/03/2011

You'll find that operators will go where the profit's greatest, at short notice.

The ~0.1-1% `shortfall' in US oil production is going to end the world.

[ProudAmericanLiberal]

09:35 AM on 02/03/2011

Wrong on so many levels.