The Obama administration released today its latest estimate of the economic cost of its moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. And the numbers
“„The other primary economic consequence of the moratorium is delayed oil production. Consistent with other studies, we estimate that the moratorium will reduce Gulf of Mexico oil production by about 31,000 barrels per day in the fourth quarter of 2010 and by roughly 82,000 barrels per day in 2011. These are small reductions compared to world production, and are occurring at a time when both crude oil and product inventories and global spare oil production capacity are at high levels, hence they are not expected to have a discernable effect on the price of oil.