On June 9, Senator Mary Landrieu questioned Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing in which she proclaimed that the Obama administration’s six month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would result in more job losses than the BP oil spill itself. Here is part of a press release she put out on the same topic in July:

Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, said today she has urged the Obama administration to drop its new moratorium on deep-water, floating oil rigs because "it could cost more jobs than the spill itself."

The Interior Department issued the moratorium this week after an appeals court rejected the administration’s first moratorium. The administration says the moratorium is necessary because of the uncertainty about deep-water drilling that was revealed when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, creating a massive, ongoing oil spill.

Landrieu, speaking at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce jobs summit, said the moratorium on floating rigs would be particularly damaging because they can be easily moved elsewhere.

Today’s New York Times brings us the reality behind Landrieu’s hissy fit, and, surprise, surprise, she could not have been more wrong:

When the Obama administration called a halt to virtually all deepwater drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon blowout and fire in April, oil executives, economists and local officials complained that the six-month moratorium would cost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in lost revenue.

/snip/

Yet the worst of those forecasts has failed to materialize, as companies wait to see how long the moratorium will last before making critical decisions on spending cuts and layoffs. Unemployment claims related to the oil industry along the Gulf Coast have been in the hundreds, not the thousands, and while oil production from the gulf is down because of the drilling halt, supplies from the region are expected to rebound in future years. Only 2 of the 33 deepwater rigs operating in the gulf before the BP rig exploded have left for other fields.

But wait, there’s even better news coming from the moratorium. It would appear that oil industry has used it as an opportunity to catch up on maintenance:

Oil companies used the enforced suspension to service and upgrade their drilling equipment, keeping shipyards and service companies busy. Drilling firms have kept most of their workers, knowing that if they let them go it will be hard to field experienced teams when the moratorium is lifted. Oil companies have shifted operations to onshore wells, saving industry jobs.

Notice that the rigs are not just being "serviced", the article states they are being "upgraded". I wonder how much new safety equipment is being put into place as a result of this enforced idling of the rigs.

Nice job, Senator. You could not have been more wrong in your warning.

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