“The Moratorium? To Me It’s The Most Irresponsible Decision that Could Have Been Made.”

Leslie Bertucci, a native of New Orleans and the owner of the oilfield equipment company R and D Enterprises.

The Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF), a fund established to compensate Gulf Coast residents in the aftermath of last year’s massive BP oil spill, said Monday it has paid out $3.8 billion so far. You will recall British Petroleum (BP) seeded the fund with $20 billion last August. GCCF has approved 300,000 claims, disallowed thousands of others and has up to half of the 857,000 submitted claims yet to process. It seems clear less than half of the 20 Billion will be awarded.

This one year anniversary of the deadly explosion that resulted in a serious petroleum spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a time for questions. I have three:

• Who is in control of the $10 to 13 billion that will be left in the GCCF fund after the remaining claims are awarded?
• What is the cost to our domestic oil production?
• What impact, if any, will this event have on the 2012 election?

ONE: Who is in control? First it is not BP. Second, the “independent” GCCF is run by Kenneth Feinberg — the administration’s Wall Street “pay czar” (hack). I’d be happy to hear from anyone who can show how this money will not just slide into any number of “Chicago Way” corrupt Obama projects. Anyone taking odds that much of it finds its way into various 2012 Democrat campaigns?

TWO: The cost? The Foundry over at the Heritage Foundation rang the Morning Bell yesterday with a terrific analysis. Go there for all of it including a link to data from a Wall Street Journal Piece. But Rush summed it up like this:

Here we are now exactly one year later, offshore production has dropped 13% and crude oil prices are up by 33%. So as you pay more at the pump the drilling ban plays into that. This regime has policies that have led to the increase both in the pump price of gasoline and the oil price per barrel.

Did you get that summary? Offshore production dropped 13% and crude prices are up 33%. But the Morning Bell slant included the impact of the events on gulf coast people. Leslie Bertucci, quoted at the top, and her husband are among those severely impacted by Obama. Their story is in this three minute Heritage vidoe on the Obama moratorium.

THREE: The spill, the moratorium, and the 2012 election could not be a bigger deal. The politics is almost an afterthought on this Gulf spill anniversary; that will change. Pump prices (over $5/gal in some cities now) by themselves will make “real energy” a driving issue in this campaign. The Obama and company reaction and determination to use the tragedy to further destroy America’s energy industry is simple and clear. Americans will get it.