New York Times

Sept. 6, 2010

"An excellent report from the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, argues that the moratorium was in a sense a blunt instrument because not all rigs were as carelessly managed as the Deepwater Horizon. Lifting the moratorium for everyone would be equally undiscriminating, the report suggests, since some rigs may quickly meet the standards while others may take months to comply.

"The report — which strongly endorses the administration’s standards while adding useful wrinkles of its own — suggests meticulous rig-by-rig inspections by government and third-party investigators. This strikes us as an essential condition of allowing drilling to resume, the only foolproof way of ensuring that industry has learned the lessons of the BP disaster."

Read the full editorial here