President Obama is backing away from earlier plans to permit new offshore drilling amid growing concerns that oil spilling from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico will soon reach the Louisiana coast, exacting serious environmental damage. Obama political advisor David Axelrod said today, “No additional drilling has been authorized and none will [be] until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable here."

This whole thing makes the administration seem incredibly naive. The only thing that has changed in the past few weeks is that an eventual reality has become an actual reality. Conservationists, and plenty of folks with old-fashioned common sense, feared an oil spill like this one.

Those who oppose new off-shore drilling and who could have guessed a major oil spill might occur know how little oversight exists for existing oil drilling operations. As ProPublica reports, regulators at the Department of Interior a few years ago passed on an opportunity to require a device for oil rigs that could have quickly stopped the spill. The device, called an acoustic control, is required in other countries including Brazil and Norway.

Lost in all the concern over the environmental impacts of the oil spill is the human toll. 11 workers are still missing as a result of the rig explosion. A lawsuit filed by the wife of one worker claims the owner and operator were negligent, in part for “failing to ensure that its crew worked in a safe and prudent manner.” An Interior report on safety in the offshore drilling industry found that “there were 41 deaths and 302 injuries out of 1,443 incidents from 2001 to 2007,” according to the Huffington Post.

BP, owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, has opposed new safety regulations, arguing in favor of voluntary programs, Huffington Post reports. Last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the oil giant a record $87 million for a Texas refinery explosion that killed 15. As I blogged yesterday, OSHA and other Labor Department agencies have pledged to crack down on companies who flaunt regulation. BP is certainly earning a reputation that should put it on OSHA’s radar.

Based on Axelrod’s comments, it appears likely the Obama administration will revive its plans to permit new drilling after the investigation into the Deepwater explosion is complete. If Obama does decide to permit new drilling, his administration must first put in place the rules necessary to assure the greatest possible protection for workers and the environment.

Image by Flickr user Blind Grasshopper; used under a Creative Commons license.