There Should Be a Temporary Moratorium on Offshore Drilling

According to CNN a federal judge in New Orleans, Louisiana has just blocked a 6 month moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf. This goes against the temporary that was issued by the White House. This is not right! There should be a temporary moratorium to prevent any further disasters from occurring.

On April 20, 2010 there was an explosion on a BP oil rig in Venice, Louisiana. Although it has been over two months since this disaster took place, yet effects from it can now be felt all over the world. As a result of this environmental disaster wildlife, seafood, and tourism have all been affected. The upper management of BP as well as the American people crave normalcy but it will be a while before this happens. We cannot afford to have another disaster of this magnitude to happen.

In order to prevent something like this from happening new safety parameters must be in place. As we can see there seems not to have been any contingency plan in place for this type of oil leak. Until the current oil spill is contained there needs to be a temporary moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf. There are many people who feel that this is not the answer. Some people are saying that when the Exxon Valdez tragedy took place that there was no moratorium on ships transporting oil. This is true but it must be taken into consideration that that was an oil spill and not and oil leak, there is a major difference in the two. Now I do realize that people who work on these oil rigs have to provide for their families however BP can afford to pay these people temporary paid leave. The money that BP has put aside for the cleanup efforts is minor when compared to the billions of dollars it has made in profits over the past 10 years.

Hopefully the Whitehouse can successfully appeal the block of the 6 month moratorium. Then issue in the Gulf can be resolved. It sometimes takes small sacrifices to make big things happen. In this case a temporary moratorium will be that small sacrifice that has to be made to make things right.