Sure took them long enough to issue it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp...zZWMDeW5fcGFnaW5hdGV fc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawN1c2F3YXJkc2ZpcnM-%3E

quote WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US government has awarded its first permit for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico since a moratorium was lifted after the BP oil disaster last year, a senior official said Monday. Michael Bromwich, head of the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy, said the permit was approved for US firm Noble Energy after a thorough vetting process and marked "a significant milestone" for Gulf operations. "Noble Energy's application has met the requirements of our new safety regulations and information requirements," Bromwich said in a conference call with reporters. "This means among other things that Noble Energy has met new requirements to show that it is prepared to deal with a potential blowout and potential for a worst-case discharge scenario." Bromwich said there were seven applications pending. "We are moving forward with deepwater drilling," he said, underscoring that all applications would be determined on "a well-by-well basis." Bromwich was brought in last June to head the Interior's highly criticized former Minerals Management Service in a reorganization aimed at strengthening oversight and policing of offshore oil and gas development following the BP spill, the worst oil disaster in US history. A massive explosion on April 20, 2010, killed 11 workers and sank the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, opening a leak that released more than 205 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, fouling US shorelines, closing rich shrimp and fishing grounds, and scaring off tourists. Bromwich said Noble Energy demonstrated that it had the capabilities, together with contractor Helix Energy Solutions, to cap and contain a blowout. Noble's worst-case scenario is a spill of 69,700 barrels a day, he said. The United States on October 12 lifted a ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf that had been due to expire at the end of November, but set tough new safety conditions. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal welcomed the permit as a "good first step" but said "we must quickly get to a level of issuing permits that represents a critical mass so thousands of oil and gas industry workers can get back to work fueling America again."

Anyone had to know that this would happen depending on two things, the price of oil and when the next election was coming up. We seem to have both criteria met.

------------------
Ron

Not to mention Bernake just testified that inflated oil prices will cause us to slip back into recession.

Good, now hopefully gas prices will come back down. WTF happened to them anyway? Last I looked it was hovering around $3.10 a gallon here, then I went to fill up and it was $3.35 in 2-3 days, which is where it is now

quote Originally posted by Xerces_Blackthorne: Good, now hopefully gas prices will come back down. WTF happened to them anyway? Last I looked it was hovering around $3.10 a gallon here, then I went to fill up and it was $3.35 in 2-3 days, which is where it is now

10 Things You Need to Know About High Gas Prices and Obama’s Oil Policy

Oil policy, combined with unrest in the Middle East and multiple revolutions is going to be driving prices up for a while.
Gas will be over $5 by Summer. The big question is how long will it stay there. This is one permit, and while it's a step in the right direction, it's only a drop in the ocean.

[This message has been edited by Formula88 (edited 03-01-2011).]

quote Originally posted by Formula88: 10 Things You Need to Know About High Gas Prices and Obama’s Oil Policy Oil policy, combined with unrest in the Middle East and multiple revolutions is going to be driving prices up for a while. Gas will be over $5 by Summer. The big question is how long will it stay there. This is one permit, and while it's a step in the right direction, it's only a drop in the ocean.

Glad I'm getting rid of the Escort and buying a 1.6l 4 cyl 5 speed MX-3 then Time to start hypermiling... If we are going to see $5 a gallon, I have a feeling it'll pay for itself by the end of the summer with the amount of driving I do. The Escort does great at gas mileage considering its 18 years old and an automatic, but its still killing me in gas prices (particularly due to the 100+ miles round trip I have to drive for class )

Guess we can only wait and see what happens...

Well, realistically the gas prices caused the recession the last time, so it should be a fun ride by fall. Gas slows economy, causing the home market to crash which was based on a house of cards, ushering in collapse, then taking out the auto market, but all predicated on fuel.

MY prediction is we'll still be feeling all this in 10 years. I think its a time of instability, based on historical trends.

I wish they could have finished cleaning up the mess from last time.. there is still a mess of oil on the bottom of the gulf, and devoid of life down there.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/...ci_oil_spill_lingers

quote By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer – Sat Feb 19, 8:53 pm ET WASHINGTON – Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor. That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012. At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't. "There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn't seem to be degrading," Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil. "Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don't know," Joye said, later adding: "there's a lot of it out there." The head of the agency in charge of the health of the Gulf said Saturday that she thought that "most of the oil is gone." And a Department of Energy scientist, doing research with a grant from BP from before the spill, said his examination of oil plumes in the water column show that microbes have done a "fairly fast" job of eating the oil. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientist Terry Hazen said his research differs from Joye's because they looked at different places at different times. Joye's research was more widespread, but has been slower in being published in scientific literature. In five different expeditions, the last one in December, Joye and colleagues took 250 cores of the sea floor and travelled across 2,600 square miles. Some of the locations she had been studying before the oil spill on April 20 and said there was a noticeable change. Much of the oil she found on the sea floor — and in the water column — was chemically fingerprinted, proving it comes from the BP spill. Joye is still waiting for results to show other oil samples she tested are from BP's Macondo well. She also showed pictures of oil-choked bottom-dwelling creatures. They included dead crabs and brittle stars — starfish like critters that are normally bright orange and tightly wrapped around coral. These brittle stars were pale, loose and dead. She also saw tube worms so full of oil they suffocated. "This is Macondo oil on the bottom," Joye said as she showed slides. "This is dead organisms because of oil being deposited on their heads." Joye said her research shows that the burning of oil left soot on the sea floor, which still had petroleum products. And even more troublesome was the tremendous amount of methane from the BP well that mixed into the Gulf and was mostly ignored by other researchers. Joye and three colleagues last week published a study in Nature Geoscience that said the amount of gas injected into the Gulf was the equivalent of between 1.5 and 3 million barrels of oil. "The gas is an important part of understanding what happened," said Ian MacDonald of Florida State University. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco told reporters Saturday that "it's not a contradiction to say that although most of the oil is gone, there still remains oil out there." Earlier this month, Kenneth Feinberg, the government's oil compensation fund czar, said based on research he commissioned he figured the Gulf of Mexico would almost fully recover by 2012 — something Joye and Lubchenco said isn't right. "I've been to the bottom. I've seen what it looks like with my own eyes. It's not going to be fine by 2012," Joye told The Associated Press. "You see what the bottom looks like, you have a different opinion." NOAA chief Lubchenco said "even though the oil degraded relatively rapidly and is now mostly but not all gone, damage done to a variety of species may not become obvious for years to come." Lubchenco Saturday also announced the start of a Gulf restoration planning process to get the Gulf back to the condition it was on Apr. 19, the day before the spill. That program would eventually be paid for BP and other parties deemed responsible for the spill. This would be separate from an already begun restoration program that would improve all aspects of the Gulf, not just the oil spill, but has not been funded by the government yet, she said. The new program, which is part of the Natural Resources Damage Assessment program, is part of the oil spill litigation — or out-of-court settlement — in which the polluters pay for overall damage to the ecosystem and efforts to return it to normal. This is different than paying compensation to people and businesses directly damaged by the spill. The process will begin with public meetings all over the region.

quote Originally posted by Gridlock: Well, realistically the gas prices caused the recession the last time, so it should be a fun ride by fall. Gas slows economy, causing the home market to crash which was based on a house of cards, ushering in collapse, then taking out the auto market, but all predicated on fuel.

It had nothing to do with gas prices. It had everything to do with home prices doubling in 5 years. (The bubble anyways; the collapse was bad mortgages)


Note peak in 2005.

Note peak in 2008.

[This message has been edited by ryan.hess (edited 03-02-2011).]