Judge to Obama Administration: Get Moving on Drilling Permits

Nicolas Loris / February 22, 2011

The Obama Administration hasn’t had their boot on the neck of just BP but also the entire Gulf economy. Federal Judge Martin Feldman is now doing the same to the Obama Administration.

A few weeks after Feldman held the Interior Department in contempt of court for ignoring his ruling to put an end to the job-killing drilling moratorium, he ordered the Interior Department to get moving on new permits one way or the other. Judge Feldman gave the Administration 30 days to act on five permits, emphasizing that the Administration has been sitting on these permits for four to nine months when Interior routinely processed the permits in two weeks’ time. Feldman wrote: “[T]he government is under a duty to act by either granting or denying a permit application within a reasonable time. Not acting at all is not a lawful option.” (more…)