Harvey Gulf CEO: Obama ‘shut it down’ in a day
Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 9:33AM 
Harvey Gulf CEO Shane Guidry told Neil Cavuto Obama shut down the Gulf oil industry "in a day." The video of Guidry's exchange with Cavuto is posted at Fox News. [Screen snip of video]
Harvey Gulf CEO Shane Guidry appeared on Neil Cavuto (Fox News) on Tuesday, responding to news about the US Export-Import Bank loan to Brazil’s state-controlled oil company for drilling offshore. Guidry heads up the company that engages in offshore towing. The HG corporate website said the company’s focus is “towing large jack-up and semi-submersible rigs in the deepwater and ultra-deepwater of the Gulf of Mexico.”
In calm, measured responses, Guidry talked about President Barack Obama’s restrictions that have led to a near-total shutdown of American drilling in the Gulf.
If a company reflects the American spirit, it would be Harvey Gulf. Begun by Shane Guidry’s father, the company has continued for three generations, engaging in commerce in distant ports in the Caribbean and ports close to home as well. The company has done something few governments can do reasonably—created well-paying jobs funded by the private sector rather than by taxpayers. As Guidry spoke to Cavuto, concern was etched across his face.
Obama’s energy policy is a direct assault not only on companies that drill, but on all the concerns necessary to supply and service those companies.
Asked about what amounts to a taxpayer funded sweetheart deal for Brazil, Guidry said, “If you’re going to do something for one country, why not do it for yours, on a lateral basis just as well?”
Will the Brazil deal help American companies like Harvey Gulf?
“There’s no way we’re going to get anything out of this at all,” Guidry said.
Obama has made much of the fact that a few companies have been given the go-ahead to drill. But Guidry reminded Cavuto that oil companies have to proceed with “a common sense approach.”
Obama’s administration tends to kneejerk, a phenomenon common in the private sector among large public companies. Once the BP spill occurred—no oversight was in place by federal bureaucrats paid with US taxpayer dollars—the president shut down an industry he knows nothing about. The BP spill was in essence a failure of government.
Most Americans support the idea of alternative energy. Fact is the technology is cost prohibitive for most Americans despite large subsidies (funded by taxpayers). At the moment, oil, gas and coal are the most viable options but socialist-progressives who still control most of the government are hostile to US interests in those sectors.
At the moment the US is being governed with an academic textbook approach. Most who work in the administration (and who serve in Congress) have never had a job in the private sector, and most of the world’s energy policy has been established by diktat by a man who has absolutely no background in physical or other sciences (Al Gore). Ironically the US oil industry has a remarkably safe record.
Hostility to an industry that creates good paying jobs makes no sense to most Americans. Some of us wonder if our socialist-progressive government is deliberately obstructing our own economy as a result of applying socialist-progressive policy to other countries—the redistribution of wealth on a global scale.
US senator David Vitter (R-La.) has formally requested in-depth information on the loan to Brazil. Other countries drilling in the Gulf include Cuba, Spain, Malaysia, Norway and India. One think tank noted Cuba’s site is located 50 miles off the Florida Keys.
Why don’t oil companies proceed in the United States?
Guidry summed up Obama’s kneejerk decision that threw hundreds of thousands of people with good paying jobs out of work at a time of record unemployment. Guidry said, “[I]n one day one man can shut it down like he did last May.”
(Commentary by Kay B. Day/March 23, 2011)
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