The disaster in the Gulf has killed the chance for a national energy policy: here are the winners and losers, if I’m right

The list of casualties from the explosion at Transocean’s (RIG) Deepwater Horizon just keeps getting longer.

There are the 11 rig workers who died in the fire. The reputation of BP (BP), the owner of the oil, Transocean, the owner and operator of the rig, and Halliburton (HAL), the company that at the time of the explosion was pouring the concrete that was to seal the well. The wetland ecologies of the Gulf coast. The fishermen and shrimpers who make a living from these waters. The towns and communities that depend on the Gulf for their economic life blood.

And somewhere in that list of casualties you should add national energy policy.

Certainly any national energy policy that’s built on cap and trade or a carbon tax or any other mechanism for fighting global climate change is now dead. And maybe even the kind of smaller, focused energy bill that Senate majority leader Harry Reid (Dem.-NV) started to talk up last weekend.

One of the strange consequences of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is that it has reduced the chances for any kind of comprehensive energy plan in the near future to between slim and none

Not because the United States doesn’t need a national energy policy. We do. Desperately. The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico just makes that clearer.

But because of the politics of energy in Washington. Read more