Rep. Bart Stupak told reporters on Capitol Hill today that he thinks the Oil Production Act will be reexamined “again and again and again” and that offshore drilling wasn’t off the table but that the catastrophic oil spill is a “difficult hurdle” for advocates of drilling to overcome in the short term.
“We’re still going to drill, but we will look at our plans better. We should learn from this one,” Stupak (D-MI) said after an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing investigating the spill.
Stupak also said that it was too early for companies involved in the spill to identify exactly what went wrong. He said it was “premature” to detail what happened and said numerous studies must be finished before anything is known for certain.
Stupak said the firms need to submit documents by the end of the day but it could be a week before the full extent is known. “We all want to know what happened but it’s going to take time.”
Reporters asked if the firms, including BP and Haliburton, were evasive. “Only when you came to the accident,” Stupak quipped, adding, “I think they just didn’t know.”
When asked by members of the panel to detail the failures that led to the explosion and what’s become three oil leaks, “They said we’re not there yet,” Stupak told reporters. He said he is “satisfied” the companies are doing everything they can to stop the leak.
[TPM SLIDESHOW: Fire In The Gulf: New Pictures Of The Deepwater Horizon]
Republican committee members said the Obama administration’s response time to the incident will be part of the investigation into the spill, particularly if there were bureaucratic roadblocks to the Gulf Coast getting help.
But ranking member Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said he does not want to put the fault “at the feet of the Obama administration” unless there is some evidence of the government not doing something it should be doing. He said it’s “premature” to talk about legislation capping the amount that a firm such as BP is required to pay in the case of such disasters.
He said it could be 70,000 barrels of oil leaked into the gulf if the leak is contained within one week and so given that, the out of pocket expenses for BP to pay for cleanup “shouldn’t break the bank.”
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