【英语国际】奥巴马的海上石油政策未能与布什划清界限

Less than four months after President Barack Obama took office, his new administration received a forceful warning about the dangers of offshore oil drilling.

The alarm was rung by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., which found that the government was unprepared for a major spill at sea, relying on an 'irrational' environmental analysis of the risks of offshore drilling.

The April 2009 ruling stunned both the administration and the oil industry, and threatened to delay or cancel dozens of offshore projects in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite its pro-environment pledges, the Obama administration urged the court to revisit the decision. Politically, it needed to push ahead with conventional oil production while it expanded support for renewable energy.

Another reason: money. In its arguments to the court, the government said that the loss of royalties on the oil, estimated at almost $10 billion, 'may have significant financial consequences for the federal government.'

The U.S. Court of Appeals reversed its decision and allowed drilling in the Gulf to proceed -- including on BP PLC's now-infamous Macondo well, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.

The Obama administration's actions in the court case exemplify the dilemma the White House faced in developing its energy policy. In his presidential campaign, President Obama criticized the Bush administration for being too soft on the oil industry and vowed to support greener energy forms.

But, once in office, President Obama ended up backing offshore drilling, bowing to political and fiscal realties, even as his administration's own scientists and Democratic lawmakers warned about its risks.

After the Macondo well blew out, sinking the Deepwater Horizon rig and causing a catastrophic spill, Mr. Obama said his administration should have been more vigilant in handling the oil industry. 'More needed to be done, and more needs to be done' to tighten oversight, he told reporters recently.

Still, the administration defends its intervention in the court case, and says the ruling made it look more cautiously at whether to open new areas to offshore drilling. It pins blame on the Bush administration for pursuing a policy for deep-offshore drilling 'that was driven by one principle: open everything,' said White House spokesman Ben LaBolt.

'Over the course of the year,' he said, 'the Interior Department conducted a review process to produce an offshore strategy that closed a number of environmentally sensitive areas from exploration and put in place a process to explore where additional production could take place.' Since the Deepwater Horizon explosion, he added, 'we are implementing top to bottom reforms to ensure that a disaster like this is never repeated.'

Michel Olsen, a former official in the Bush Interior Department, defended the previous administration's offshore approach. 'Our policy was founded on the requirements of the law,' he said. 'It wasn't just to give industry whatever it wanted.'

Reuters波涛起伏的海面制约了除油船清除“深水地平线”漏油事件所产生的浮油的能力。图为，台湾海陆运输公司经过改造的超级油轮“鲸鱼号”上周日在墨西哥湾。奥巴马就任美国总统不到四个月时，他领导的美国新政府在海上石油钻探的风险性问题上接到了一则深具说服力的警告。

这一警钟由哥伦比亚特区的一家联邦上诉法院敲响，这家法院发现，由于美国政府在评估海上石油钻探风险方面依靠的是“非理性的”环境分析，因此重大的海上漏油事故会使它措手不及。

该法院2009年4月的一项裁决震惊了美国政府和石油行业，使美国阿拉斯加州和墨西哥湾地区的数十个海上石油项目面临被推迟实施或者取消的可能。

尽管奥巴马政府承诺会重视环境保护，但它还是敦促这家法院重新考虑自己的裁决。从政治上说，奥巴马政府在加大支持可再生能源的同时，也需要推动常规的石油生产。

奥巴马政府这样做的另一个原因是钱。它在向这家法院提出的反驳中说，如果失去将近100亿美元的海上石油开采许可费收入，联邦政府的财政将大受影响。

这家美国上诉法院后来推翻了自己的裁决，允许石油公司继续在墨西哥湾进行钻探，其中也包括允许英国石油公司(BP PLC)在距路易斯安那州海岸50英里的Macondo油井继续钻探，墨西哥湾此次臭名昭著的漏油事故就发生在这口油井。

从奥巴马政府与法院交锋的这起案例中，可以看出白宫在形成自己能源政策方面所面临的两难。奥巴马在竞选总统时批评布什政府对石油业太软弱，并发誓说他当选后会支持发展更环保的能源。

可一旦入主白宫，奥巴马迫于政治和财政现实却最终选择了支持海上石油钻探，尽管美国政府的科学家和民主党议员们都警告过海上石油钻探的危险性。

在Macondo油井发生爆炸、导致深水地平线(Deepwater Horizon)钻井平台沉没并引发灾难性漏油事故后，奥巴马表示美国政府在与石油行业打交道时本应更警惕一些才对。他最近对记者们表示，无论是过去还是现在，在加强监管方面都需要做得更多。

不过奥巴马政府依然对自己上述干预法院裁决的行为作了辩护，并说法院的裁决使政府在考虑是否开放新的区域进行海上石油钻探时采取了更谨慎的态度。奥巴马政府将问题归咎于布什政府支持在深海开采石油的政策，白宫发言人拉伯特(Ben LaBolt)说，推动这一政策的原则是：放开所有的东西。

他说，在一年的时间内，奥巴马政府的内政部(Interior Department)完成了一个旨在制定海上石油政策的评估过程，根据这一政策将许多环境敏感型地区列为了石油勘探的禁区，并设定了评估可以在哪些海域增加石油生产的程序。他还说，深水地平线钻井平台发生爆炸后，奥巴马政府正在实施彻底的改革以确保类似灾难永远不会重演。

曾在布什政府担任内政部官员的奥尔森(Michel Olsen)为布什那届政府的海上石油政策进行了辩护。他说，我们的政策是依法制定的，它不是石油行业要什么就给什么。