CNN "American Morning" - Transcript
Interview
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ROBERTS: Thirteen minutes after the hour. The president's six- month ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has been thrown out by a federal judge in New Orleans. He called the moratorium, quote, "arbitrary," ruling the Interior Department failed to show an imminent threat that was posed by all deepwater drilling.
But not only is the White House promising to appeal that but Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is already preparing to draft a new moratorium.
Joining me live from Washington this morning is Louisiana Congressman Charlie Melancon. He is a Democrat who represents much of the shoreline impacted by this spill.
Congressman Melancon, what's your take on this back-and-forth by the White House? You get the moratorium lifted by a judge, they're going to appeal that -- and come out with a new moratorium in the next day or two.
REP. CHARLIE MELANCON (D), LOUISIANA: Well, exactly what you said, the back-and-forth is just like a tennis match. My concern is that if we keep this up, moratorium might look like the shorter option of the two. I'm perplexed by it.
We've obviously made our plea to the White House, to the secretary of interior, and others. I think they hear us but I don't think they're paying attention. You know, we believe that the moratorium and the legal procedures may, in fact, just collapse the economy of our region --
ROBERTS: Yes.
MELANCON: -- which has been a bright spot for the last couple of years while the rest of the nation was suffering.
ROBERTS: Is there any way to really measure the economic impact here? Because it's not just immediate, it's not just idling the rigs and the rig workers and the boats that supply the rigs, but there's a chance that if they can't make money off the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil companies will send them elsewhere.
MELANCON: Well, that's the frustration, is you take the rigs and start moving them to other countries. And what I've been told, and this is in the past, not necessarily discussions immediately, that other countries will pay more to get the rigs to their waters to work, particularly these deepwater rigs, and because of the potential for the fines there.
So losing them into the Gulf of Mexico just on the numbers for offshore oil and gas workers, that's $330 million a month, just the workers. Now that's not the service industry which is what Louisiana's forte is. That's what our expertise is. We have got the offshore service industry people that and onshore for that matter, that will be -- tremendous impact.
ROBERTS: Let me just look at the flip side of this argument for a second. You had the CEO of BP, Tony Hayward, saying to congress that the ultimate fail safe device which is that blowout preventer is, quote, "not as fail-safe as we believed it to be."
So is it prudent, congressman Melancon, to proceed with deep water drilling before we have fully investigated what happened with that blowout?
MELANCON: Well, I understand that. Having spoken with other people in the oil industry, they should have had backup blowout protectors, stacking one or two on top of each other. Because of the nature where they are drilling, BP took the minimum responsible efforts or -- procedures and that was it. They didn't have backups. And we saw that in their plan. Of course, we saw that in other plans from other companies. But from what I'm told, BP is an outlier in the industry. I can't confirm that. But that's what I'm told.
ROBERTS: Right. Your position puts you at odds with some of your democratic colleagues, including senator Patty Murray who said, quote, "we shouldn't even consider putting our environment, our economy, or our workers at risk on deepwater drilling projects until we know what caused this tragedy in the Gulf Coast. And until we understand exactly how to prevent anything like it, from ever happening again." What do you say to senator Murray?
MELANCON: Well, you know, the best I can say is that, we, back in the '80s, when three mile island occurred, we shut down nuclear energy for producing electricity. That was a mistake. We should have looked at what was going on. But it didn't mean shutting everything down and not going forward.
We are getting ready to do the same kind of thing on fossil fuel. Some people that are in my -- my party believe fossil fuels need to be shut down. We can wean ourselves off over time into the lean energy. But it is a combination of things that we are going to need and we will need fossil fuel for a long time to come.
So we have been a producer, our people -- learned to live with it. We enjoy a lot of the benefits that come from New Orleans from being down there. And but at the same time, we -- I understand where they are coming from. But don't tell me what we should be doing in our region. I won't tell what you to do in your region.
ROBERTS: You know the only way to know what happened with this blowout is when they get that blowout preventer up off the ocean floor, and that probably won't be until August at least, should we -- at least wait until then before proceeding with deepwater drilling?
MELANCON: You know, what we have got down on the single right now has nothing to do with what lies on the ocean floor in the other riggs. Mr. Salazar inferred the other day in a meeting I had with him, that in fact, they didn't think they could check these BOP's once they were down there. But he's being told now that that is a possibility.
So if that is a possibility, what we could do, is allow for these rigs, go ahead proceed in drilling. They have go 5,000, 8,000 feet through the water. And then 18,000, 20,000 feet through the rock and salt and whatever else is down there. Allow them to proceed with moving forward with drilling. Find out if there are outliers like BP if, in fact, there are. Don't allow those to go forward. Start inspecting those immediately. Allow the other ones to continue drilling and until they get to -- right before they end in the formation that they are trying to penetrate. And make sure that they are inspected before they get to that.
The equipment on the floor of the Gulf is inspected to get to that. And then we can maybe do this in a manner that doesn't shut down an entire industry and entire region of the country and allows us to continue forward.
ROBERTS: All right well we'll see you -
MELANCON: In a safer manner.
ROBERTS: All right well we will see what the interior secretary has to say on that very soon.
Congressman Charlie Melancon, good to talk to you this morning, thanks for joining us.
MELANCON: Thank you.
ROBERTS: Kiran.
CHETRY: Well still ahead, home prices, where is the value of your biggest investment headed now? Christine Romans joins us with an update. Also at the must-win soccer game today. Less than two hours away, it's U.S. versus Algeria. Our Richard Roth and Max Kellermann weigh in.
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