It would be great if we did not have to have any government regulations. But there are far too many businesses in the banking, investing, energy, housing, manufacturing and retail sectors that will resort to unscrupulous, if not outright illegal practices and take unfair advantage of the American people. Thus, like them or not, we need government regulations for our protection.
Government regulations require large bureaucracies for enforcement and oversight purposes. The problem is that many businesses and industries end up being uber-burdened by the regulators. Even prior to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the regulations for building new nuclear power plants were so burdensome and costly, that they all but made it impossible to build any.
This past week, The Houston Club sponsored an Energy Summit for its oil and gas membership. One of the topics was about securing federal off-shore drilling permits. Industry representatives complained about running into roadblocks while trying to obtain off-shore exploration permits in the wake of last year’s BP disaster.
Paul Bulmahn, the CEO of ATP Oil & Gas Corporation, dumped a 3,000 page stack of a single drilling application on the podium. Bulmahn told the summit, “As you can see, the application for a permit has ballooned out of control.” He pointed out that the papers piled up as the government regulators repeatedly requested more information. “It was a game to them. It was survival of my company to me.”
Time is money. How many ATP Oil & Gas people worked on compiling those 3,000 pages and how long did it take them? If most of them were lawyers, as I suspect they were, how many government lawyers will it take to study that application and how long will it take them before they can come to a decision on the application? And will their decision be to request additional paper work from ATP?
The federal regulators are uber-burdening the energy industry to the extent that we will see no more new nuclear power plants being built. And with applications requiring the manpower and time to produce more than 3,000 pages of paperwork, the regulators are making it difficult for small energy companies to obtain oil and gas drilling permits.
You would think the government could figure out a way to administer its regulatory powers without making it so costly and time consuming to business and industry that it impedes development and ends up raising consumer prices for just about everything we buy.
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