Murkowski, Oil Lobby Block Effort To Make Industry Fully Pay For Spills

[kpete]

Source: Talking Points Memo

Murkowski, Oil Lobby Block Effort To Make Industry Fully Pay For Spills
Zachary Roth | May 14, 2010, 10:01AM

Even in a Washington as dominated by corporate money as today's, it's not often that you see a lawmaker side with financial backers over the public interest as brazenly as Alaska's senior senator did yesterday.

In the wake of last month's catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is "not where we need to be right now" she said.

Murkowski's move came just hours after Washington's top oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API) expressed vociferous opposition to raising the cap. It argued that doing so would "threaten the viability of deep-water operations, significantly reduce U.S. domestic oil production and harm U.S. energy security." API's membership includes large oil companies like ExxonMobil and BP America, as well as smaller ones.

An API spokeswoman told TPMmuckraker that the bill represented "a knee-jerk reaction that could have unintended consequences." she added: "It's important that the Senate did vote it down."

Read more: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/murkowski_oil_lobby_block_effort_to_make_industry.php?ref=fpb

[groundloop]

1. Well geeze, don't dump oil in the water and you don't have to worry about liability

These folks seem to be afraid of the fact that it costs a little bit to do things right. If they can't take shortcuts it might cost them a fraction of a percent in profits.

[Uncle Joe]

2. What about all the smaller companies; based on collecting seafood?

Would wiping out the food chain have "unintended consequences?"

Would the diminishing of biodiversity due to the extinction of species have "unintended consequences"?

Increasing the cost of deep-water oil drilling could have "unintended consequences" such as spurring the development of sustainable, environmentally sound energy sources.

It's too bad the only green some politicians give a damn about is what they can put in their bank account.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. But, but smaller companies make smaller political contributions to her.

[catgirl]

4. What's the state of the elections in Alaska? n/t

[Scurrilous]

5. K & R

:thumbsup: