Gulf oil leases get waivers

WASHINGTON - Despite President Obama's promises of better safeguards for offshore drilling, federal regulators continue to approve plans for oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico with minimal or no environmental analysis.

The Interior Department's Minerals Management Service has signed off on at least five new offshore drilling projects since June 2, when the agency's acting director announced tougher safety regulations for drilling in the gulf, a McClatchy Newspapers review of public records has found.

Three of the projects were approved with waivers exempting them from detailed studies of their environmental impact - the same waiver the MMS granted to BP for the ill-fated well that has been fouling the gulf with crude for two months.

In a May 14 speech in the Rose Garden, Obama said he was "closing the loophole that has allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews."

Environmental groups, however, say that the loophole is as wide as ever and that the administration is allowing oil companies to proceed with drilling plans that might be just as flawed as BP's, which concluded that a major spill was "unlikely" and that the company was equipped to manage even the worst-case blowout.

"It's just outrageous," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation organization. "The whole world is screaming and . . . they're just continuing to move this stuff through the system."

The Obama administration has said it is cracking down on the oil industry with a six-month moratorium that prevents regulators from granting new permits for offshore wells deeper than 500 feet underwater in the Gulf of Mexico. But that hasn't stopped oil companies from submitting new drilling plans, which routinely underestimate environmental risks and overestimate the companies' ability to respond to a disaster.

According to MMS records, the agency since June 2 has granted environmental exemptions - known as "categorical exclusions" - to three new drilling projects. Of those, an Exxon Mobil site at a water depth of 1,000 feet and a Marathon Oil site at 775 feet are classified as deepwater; the third is a shallow-water project by Houston-based Rooster Petroleum.