As businesses along the Gulf Coast await the expiration of President Obama’s offshore drilling moratorium, they’re faced with a new hardship: Neither BP nor the Gulf Coast Claims Facility appear willing to pay for lost income resulting from the ban.

Last week BP announced it was deferring all moratorium-related claims to Ken Feinberg, the Obama-appointed administrator of the $20 billion claims fund. That news came as a surprise to Feinberg, however. He maintains the moratorium claims are BP’s responsibility.

“Those claims are not under Feinberg’s jurisdiction with the GCCF,” spokeswoman Amy Weiss told me. She referred questions to BP.

But a spokesman for BP said the company is planning to transfer all outstanding claims to Feinberg, including those from businesses that cite the drilling ban.

“There are claims in the system that are moratorium-related,” BP spokesman John Curry said. “The entire database will transition to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility when Feinberg gets it up and running.”

The uncertainty — and apparent unwillingness of either BP or Feinberg to take responsibility — leaves businesses in the dark about their moratorium-related claims. Those businesses could be mom-and-pop stores that rely on the steady flow of customers working on rigs or suppliers of oilfield equipment. Each is affected by the moratorium in its own unique way.

So far BP hasn’t rejected any claims, but many of the 147,194 remain unresolved. The company has made 116,063 payments, totaling more than $340 million. It does not have a breakdown of how many claims are related to the moratorium.

Obama’s drilling ban creates a tricky situation for BP and Feinberg. At the president’s request, BP pledged $100 million for oil rig workers affected by the moratorium. But those grants are limited to the estimated 9,000 people who worked on the 33 deep-water rigs when the federal moratorium began on May 6. Workers have a 30-day period to apply beginning on Sept. 1.

Because the Gulf Coast states are so reliant on the energy industry, the moratorium is having a widespread impact beyond the 33 rigs that were idled when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar first instituted the drilling ban. Two of those rigs have already left the Gulf for Egypt and Congo.

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President Obama’s decision to appoint so many czars is  clearly troubling members of Congress, who have taken the  unusual step of holding hearings on the issue.  The decision of the two Senate committees is remarkable because a President’s management style is rarely questioned by the Senate or House during the first year of his term, especially when they are all members of the same political party.   But, Obama’s decision to appoint almost 40 policy czars, and then give them broad powers and budgetary responsibilities, has created a more serious constitutional issue.  

The Senate is primarily concerned that President Obama may be end-running the Constitution, along with the growing fear, shared by many citizens, that the power and the extraordinary amount of funding that is controlled by the Czars may be undermining the authorities of the senate-confirmed agency heads on whom the Senate has placed its imprimatur and its trust. 

Czars currently influence or directly control over a trillion dollars of government spending, which is more than the spending of the entire federal government during the Reagan Administration.  And, yet, few of the Obama  czars were ever vetted through the traditional review process where potential conflicts of interest are revealed.  Nor are Obama’s czars accountable to the Senate to justify policy or spending decisions. 

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