Seahawk is the first off-shore drilling company to declare bankruptcy and liquidate as a direct result of the hostile climate created by the EPA. Not only from the draconian drilling moratorium after the BP oil spill, but a refusal to grant new drilling permits even after the moratorium was lifted.

The first off-shore drilling company in the Gulf of Mexico to declare bankruptcy has blamed the government-imposed standstill for a shortage of shallow-water permits following the summer’s massive oil spill. Texas-based Seahawk Drilling, the second-largest shallow-water driller operating in the Gulf, announced it had filed for bankruptcy Friday and would be selling its remaining assets to Hercules Offshore.

According to the press release announcing the sale, the company’s liquidity and revenue stream “have been adversely affected by the dramatic slowdown in the issuing of shallow-water permits in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico following the Macondo well blowout.”

This is what Barack Obama wants. He hates drilling companies and would like to see every one of them go out of business. Obama’s disastrous economic policies will take decades to recover from.

If you only read one column today it should be this one. Michelle Malkin goes after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for his ruinous war on oil drilling. She highlights the ruling by a US District Court judge yesterday that Salazar and his department have a “determined disregard for the rule of law.”

What Salazar and his eco-terrorist cronies are doing to the energy industry is horrifying. It could take a decade or more to recover from this insanity. At a time when our nation needs domestic energy production more than ever we have some asshole in a cowboy hat and bolo tie destroying it.

I worry sometimes that our country isn’t going to survive a full term under Barack Obama. The man is a menace.

From Politico:

The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior inspector general says in a new report.

In the wee hours of the morning of May 27, a staff member to White House energy adviser Carol Browner sent two edited versions of the department report’s executive summary back to Interior. The language had been changed to insinuate the seven-member panel of outside experts – who reviewed a draft of various safety recommendations – endorsed the moratorium, according to the IG report obtained by POLITICO.

We all knew The White House committed flat out fraud, but now this IG report confirms that. The Greenies in this administration saw the BP oil spill as an opportunity to stop oil drilling and deal a blow to the oil industry.

The report stops short of saying the WH deliberately misled, but I don’t know how you could characterize it any other way. The scientists were outraged that their views had been twisted around in the report to suggest they supported a moratorium.

One thing is for certain. The new GOP controlled Congress will get to the bottom of this.

From the AP:

BP PLC said Wednesday that it had made a "giant" oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico but had not yet determined the size and commercial potential of the find.

The well, in Keathley Canyon block 102 about 250 miles (400 kms) southeast of Houston, is in 4,132 feet (1,259 meters) of water, the company said.

The Tiber well was drilled to a total depth of 35,055 feet (10,685 meters), making it one of the deepest wells ever drilled by the oil and gas industry, BP said.

I happen to live in Houston, and unlike the fools in California we like our drilling. Since we provide most of the country with energy, I think we should cut California off until they pull their weight. There are billions of barrels of oil off the coast of California, but eco-extremists and global warming nuts are keeping it from being drilled.

Sarah Palin has responded via Facebook to the reports of the Obama administration giving Brazil $2 billion dollars to expand off-shore drilling off their coast while continuing to prevent America from doing the same.

Here’s the entire piece:

YOUR TAX DOLLARS HARD AT WORK: FIRST CARS, NOW FOREIGN OIL.

Today’s Wall Street Journal contains some puzzling news for all Americans who are impacted by high energy prices and who share the goal of moving us toward energy independence.

For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan.

So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources? That’s all Americans want; but such rational energy development has been continually thwarted by rabid environmentalists, faceless bureaucrats and a seemingly endless parade of lawsuits aimed at shutting down new energy projects.

I’ll speak for the talent I have personally witnessed on the oil fields in Alaska when I say no other country in the world has a stronger workforce than America, no other country in the world has better safety standards than America, and no other country in the world has stricter environmental standards than America. Come to Alaska to witness how oil and gas can be developed simultaneously with the preservation of our eco-system. America has the resources. We deserve the opportunity to develop our resources no less than the Brazilians. Millions of Americans know it is true: "Drill, baby, drill." Alaska is proof you can drill and develop, and preserve nature, with its magnificent caribou herds passing by the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), completely unaffected. One has to wonder if Obama is playing politics and perhaps refusing a "win" for some states just to play to the left with our money.

The new Gulf of Mexico lease sales tomorrow sound promising and perhaps will move some states in the right direction, but we all know that the extreme environmentalists who serve to block progress elsewhere, including in Alaska, continue to block opportunities. These environmentalists are putting our nation in peril and forcing us to rely on unstable and hostile foreign countries. Mr. Obama can stop the extreme tactics and exert proper government authority to encourage resource development and create jobs and health benefits in the U.S.; instead, he chooses to use American dollars in Brazil that will help to pay the salaries and benefits for Brazilians to drill for resources when the need and desire is great in America.

Buy American is a wonderful slogan, but you can’t say in one breath that you want to strengthen our economy and stimulate it, and then in another ship our much-needed dollars to a nation desperate to drill while depriving us of the same opportunity.

- Sarah Palin

Well said.

(hat tip Gateway Pundit)

Why are we paying Brazil to develop their natural resources while blocking the development of our own?

Because we have nutty left-wing assholes in power, that’s why.

Like any good clueless liberal, president Obama ordered his Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to shelve plans that would have opened up America’s coastlines to offshore oil drilling. As we all know, liberals are controlled by environmental wackos who don’t want America to use its own natural resources. We have oil (a shit load of it) under the ocean and we can’t get at it because of left-wingers who want energy prices to keep rising and stay high to force people to accept global warming regulations.

As any sane person also knows, global warming is the biggest fraud in world history. Sooner or later these hucksters are gonna be exposed and Al Gore is gonna be out of a job.

While I love the mantra of “Drill, Baby, Drill”, I think the time has come to make it “Drill, Motherf*cker, Drill.”

-Chris Jones

(image courtesy of Doug Ross)