Covering the Drilling Moratorium, the AP Gets Its Digs In

When it comes to the way the MSM covers the news, sometimes it’s the little things that are the most annoying. The AP covered Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s decision to re-impose a six month deep water drilling moratorium in predictable fashion, using most of the piece to emphasize the administration’s fear-mongering tactics as justification for a decision that will damage the economy of the Gulf states more than the oil spill. U.S. District Court Judge Milton Feldman’s reasons for overturning the ban aren’t addressed until the last two paragraphs of the piece, and even then not before the reader has been coached to dismiss Feldman’s opinion after reading this snarky observation:

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and has owned stock in a number of petroleum-related companies, sided with the plaintiffs.

Has owned stock in petroleum-related companies? Really? In a financial world full of 401Ks, IRAs and money market funds, how many people haven’t owned stock in “petroleum-related” companies? More to the point, what does the person who appointed him or what investments he made have to do with Feldman’s opinion, or with the many good arguments that suggest the moratorium is a very bad idea?

The AP does a great job of recounting the death toll from the initial explosion and the magnitude of the subsequent spill. I’m not quite sure why, since I doubt if there’s anyone left on the planet who doesn’t have a pretty good idea about how bad things are in the gulf, but if they want to repeat those stats, fine. How about some other statistics though? There are statistics one rarely sees in MSM coverage of the spill on the deep water drilling moratorium, statistics the administration doesn’t like to talk about:

• About 30 percent of the nation’s total domestic oil production and 13 percent of domestic natural gas production comes from the Gulf of Mexico

• Approximately 80 percent of the oil and 45 percent of the natural gas in the Gulf come from deep water exploration.

• According to the American Petroleum Institute (API), a moratorium on deep water drilling would result in the loss of up to 130,000 barrels of oil per day by 2011 and as much as 500,000 barrels per day between 2013 and 2017, making the United States more dependent on oil from other countries.

• API’s calculations also show the moratorium could put 46,200 jobs at risk in the short-term and as many as 120,000 jobs over the long-term.

And then there’s the most important point of all: no matter what Salazar or Obama says or does, deep water drilling will continue, in the gulf and around the world. It’s merely a question of whether we reap the benefits, or whether we’ll leave it to Russia, China, Brazil and other nations to collect those riches by themselves.