Salazar said.
But Sen. Landrieu noted that before the blowout, the government's own experts said production in the Gulf of Mexico this year would be 1.77 million barrels a day. Now that projection has dropped to 1.39 million.
In 2012, the government originally projected production of 1.82 million barrels a day, but now sees a decline to 1.14 million barrels a day.
That is a drop of 680,000 barrels a day, which equals about half of the global exports from Libya. Unrest in Libya has led to concerns over a disruption in that country’s exports, creating fears that are driving oil prices higher.
At the same time, some Republican senators charge the Environmental Protection Agency is out to kill the coal industry.
More than half the nation's electricity comes from coal, and Senate Minority Leader McConnell, R-Ky., accuses the EPA of sitting on mine applications, noting 79 are now in bureaucratic limbo.
"The EPA has turned the permitting process into a back-door means of shutting down coal mines by sitting on permits indefinitely, thus removing any regulatory certainty," he said.
So McConnell, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and others introduced a bill to force the EPA to use or lose its veto over mine applications within 60 days.
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