The Impact of the BP Oil Spill

0:00Well, we will enter the eighth week of the oil spill disaster here in Louisiana, and so much talk, the loss of thousands of jobs in the fishing industry. Now, this morning, a lot of the conversation having to do with a drilling moratorium, how we see an estimated anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 oil services jobs that could vanish with a six-month federal moratorium.

0:53I couldn't sleep. I'm just so concerned what the future of all of us has in store for us here. I know this is your business, so why don't you tell us, our region, what does it look like, the future, and how long will it take to recover if we do? Well, those are very good questions. I'm afraid I don't have specific numbers because this is the future, and I don't think economists have any better role on this than anyone else, but you're quite right. There will be a lot of oil service jobs lost, people taking food out to the oil rigs, restaurant jobs, food services, all sorts of things, and if the The smell comes across, as people say it will, although I haven't seen it, but I haven't smelled it yet, there will be a loss of tourism also.

1:46So yes, we'll be in dire straits, and they're talking about this oil going on for six months, and the moratorium means who knows what Obama's got in store for us. So the situation does look rather bleak without putting any specific numbers on it, which I'm unable to do. And there's no guarantees. I had a caller call me about an hour ago and say, well, Bob, how can you guarantee that if the president lifted the moratorium, that we would never have another accident? You can't do that. And we all understand that the oil industry creates these tens of thousands of jobs in the state of Louisiana, but on the other hand, at the sacrifice of our health and our natural resources. So we're, you know, how,

3:00Now, and it's frustrating, I mean, you sit here every morning and you listen to callers and you try to get some hope, at least we've got one good thing going, this new cap, apparently it's capturing some oil, so that's a little hope there. Well, that's good, there's one interesting point, the oil sands in Alberta, the environmentalists were very down on that, but I guess Louisiana's losses, Alberta, Canada's gain because at At least you don't have oil spills with the oil sands, even though you have environmental issues there. It's also interesting to discuss not only what will happen, but to lay the finger of blame. Why is it that we're in such dire straits, what are the difficulties?

3:45And I'm a free market economist, so the bad guys in my rex economy, usually government, for example, government and environmentalists, left-wing environmentalists and unholy alliance, have orchestrated things in such a way that they couldn't drill in the shallow water right off the coast. They had to go in very deep water. And one of the problems in deep water, I think they're 5,000 feet deep out there, a mile down roughly, it's much more dangerous, much more likely to have problems, and when you have problems, it's harder to solve problems a mile down than 50 feet down, say, on the oil shelf. So, if the government hadn't, with the little help from left-wing environmentalists, banished oil drilling out into the deep water, we might not have been in the dire straits that we're now in.

4:40So if we're going to lay fingers to blame, obviously BP is first on the list. But your friend and my friend, the government, is also implicated here. Well, you know, a lot of people, as far as government are concerned, think that oil drilling The President of the United States asked him, Mr. President, would you please lift the moratorium? It's going to affect 20,000 to 30,000 jobs. And his answer being, well, they can collect unemployment. To me, that's a good question.

5:25The Theory of Money and I guess I can take the words out of the mouth of Coach Peyton yesterday when he said that the players, the football players, after their training camp today are going to go down to Plaquemines Parish. They want to spend some time with the people down there and give them a little inspiration and address the fact that, hey, there's always hope.

6:25Are we resilient enough to survive this one? I don't know. Oh, I think we're resilient enough to survive pretty much anything. If we can get through, I was going to say Katrina, but not Katrina. If we can get through the Army Corps of Engineers and see how they screwed up Katrina and created the Katrina problem, we can get through anything. Well, Professor, as soon as you get an answer on this one, call me back. We're all going to anxiously await and see how this all plays out. I think it's a day-by-day situation. I hope that this new cap will catch more oil than it is, and at that point, we don't know if it's 12,000 or 25,000 barrels a day, but I guess eventually we'll find out, and Professor, thanks for joining me this morning. Thanks for having me on your show. You're so candid with us. Thank you very much, Professor Walter Block.