JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says the Gulf Coast oil spill occurred because the companies involved deviated from industry standards, not because of the inherent risk of drilling offshore.
Barbour spoke Tuesday at a meeting of the Mississippi Energy Policy Institute in Jackson.
Barbour says the biggest lesson from oil spill was that it was “totally preventable, totally avoidable.”
Barbour also criticized what he called the Obama administration’s “permatorium” on drilling in new areas of the eastern Gulf and the Atlantic seaboard.
He says what President Obama calls energy policy is actually environmental policy.
Barbour has been particularly critical of the stalled policy of cap and trade, which would have imposed a cost on industries that emit greenhouse gases.
