I mean, Cheney is dead, isn't he? I thought that's why I didn't see him on TV anymore criticizing Obama, because his shriveled, walnut-sized heart finally stopped pushing cholesterol through his hardened arteries.
Anyhow... Although responsibility for the cleanup is all Obama's, we can still thank Dubya & Cheney for the lax regulation and encouragement of riskier deep-ocean drilling that caused the BP spill. Thanks again, dicks. I wonder how many other nice surprises you have arranged for us.
By Kate Sheppard
June 10, 2010 | Mother Jones
[...]
The American Petroleum Institute offered its own long list of suggestions for energy policy. A March 20, 2001, email from API to an official at the Energy Department included a draft executive order calling for all federal agencies to issue a detailed statement on any regulatory action that "adversely affects energy supply, distribution or use." It was nearly identical to the order Bush issued just two months later.
Many of the recommendations from the [secretive Cheney-led energy] task force report were adopted in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. [You remember, right? Yep, that was a Republican-led Congress and Republican White House that left that flaming bag of doo-doo on our doorstep, folks - J.] That legislation provided $6 billion in subsidies for oil and gas development. Royalty payments for oil and gas development were waived in several regions of the US. Some companies were allowed to pay royalties with oil, rather than money—a less transparent system that was more vulnerable to abuse. The bill also provided $1.5 billion in direct payments to companies to incentivize drilling in deepwater wells, and curtailed the power of states to oversee oil and gas exploration off their coasts under the Coastal Zone Management Act.
In addition, the bill weakened environmental protections for offshore drilling, making it easier to exclude a broad range of exploration and drilling activities from analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act. This has been cited as the reason that the Deepwater Horizon site was not subjected to a thorough environmental analysis.
The task force's final report also presented a rosy picture of the offshore drilling industry. Newer oil and gas drilling methods, it said, "practically eliminate spills from offshore platforms" and "enhance worker safety, lower risk of blowouts, and provide better protection of groundwater resources." The report advocated lifting the moratorium on portions of the outer continental shelf, noting that "concerns over the potential impacts of oil spills have been a major factor behind imposition of the OCS moratoria." Bush lifted the executive moratorium in 2008, and the Democratic-controlled Congress allowed its own moratorium to expire.
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