Mariner Energy’s oil rig exploded 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana this morning, with Coast Guard officials already reporting an oil slick on the surface about a mile long. But yesterday, Mariner employees were part of the 5,000 oil-industry workers who rallied at the Houston Convention Center in protest of Obama’s moratorium on offshore drilling, as well as proposed new taxes and punitive measures after the Deepwater Horizon spill. “I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this administration is trying to break us,” Barbara Dianne Hagood, a senior landman for Mariner, told the Financial Times (registration required). “The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the gulf coast, gulf coast employees and gulf coast residents.”
US oil industry protests against drilling moratorium [FT via Kathy E. Gill/Twitter]
