Crist, Barbour collide on deepwater drilling freeze

The governors of two states threatened by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill offered starkly different views Sunday about whether the six-month federal ban on deepwater oil-and-gas drilling should be scrapped.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) – echoing Gulf Coast politicians including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) – said the ban will harm the regional and national economy.

“I don’t think we should have a moratorium,” Barbour said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He said it is important to discover what caused the massive BP oil spill, but defended the overall safety history of the offshore industry and insisted that “it is very reasonable to continue to drill.”

“If we don’t, then all this oil drilling equipment is going to leave the Gulf of Mexico. It is going to go to West Africa, Brazil, to Australia, to China and it is not going to be back in six months when the moratorium is over. It is going to be gone," Barbour said.

Barbour and other foes of the drilling ban are fearful of idling thousands of oil industry workers at a time when the Gulf Coast region is already suffering. Barbour said he planned to register his objection to the ban with President Barack Obama, who is visiting the Gulf Coast on Monday and Tuesday.

But Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (I) said the ban must remain in place.

“We need this moratorium. If this spew in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t tell us that we need to be more cautious and more careful about doing this in the future, I don’t know what else would,” he said on the CBS program.

He called the spill “a great wake up call for everybody in America about the danger of fossil fuels and what it is doing to our country and that we have to go to alternative energy.”

The deepwater ban is in place while a White House-created bipartisan commission probes the causes of the BP spill and needed reforms. Administration officials have recently suggested they’re open to a shorter ban if the panel can conduct its work more quickly, but also emphasize that preventing future disasters is the top priority.