The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

“We are open for business,” Salazar said.

pathetic. almost as funny as 'surprise inspections' of deepwater rigs.

The new rules will add $183 million a year to the cost of drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, the Interior Department said in a notice to be published Oct. 14 in the Federal Register. The rules will add an extra $1.42 million in costs for each new deep-water well that uses a floating rig. Shallow-water wells will cost an extra $90,000.

i'd like to see how those numbers are derived. I suspect the real cost increases will be far larger than $1.42 M/well. Those are probably additional hardware costs for a rig on site and neglect the additional costs related to new regulations (e.g. legal, insurance, re-engineering of hardware, additional land based administrative personnel). I know the Obama administration's lost employment numbers are fictional, e.g. they completely neglect workers in many of the service companies and while many roughneck and boat types found work associated with the cleanup and shuttle services managed to survive shuttling gov't employees around, those jobs are now either gone or going away. The numbers i've been told for resumption of drilling are between 12 and 24 months. So much for 'business'.