Drilling halt may be worse than oil spill -critics
SMU economist Bernard Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute, talks about the downside of halting off-shore drilling.
By Eileen O'Grady and Bruce Nichols
HOUSTON, June 3 (Reuters) - A backlash is building against the Obama administration's offshore drilling moratorium, which some argue worsens the harm to a Gulf Coast economy already losing fishing and tourism business to the oil spill.
Louisiana politicians, including Sen. David Vitter and Governor Bobby Jindal, have sent letters to President Barack Obama urging reconsideration of the May 27 executive order.
"It's the wrong thing to do at the wrong time," said Chris John, a former member of Congress who is now president of the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association.
"It may be good politics, but it is bad economics," said Bernard Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business in Dallas. . . "In terms of capital expenditures and wages, offshore drilling has to have a bigger economic impact than fishing."
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