Spill? What spill?

When the Obama administration on Tuesday lifted the moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling, you might have thought the president would get at least a little love from the Louisiana politicians who have been complaining about the economic harm wrought by the ban since it was imposed in May.

He did not. Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, who had protested the moratorium by placing a hold on President Obama’s nominee to run the White House Office of Management and Budget, still refuses to remove it. At least five Republican congressmen from the oily-feathered Pelican State (Louisiana’s official nickname) issued releases Tuesday lamenting that the administration didn’t go far enough, because a new permitting process imposed on drillers by the Interior Department will delay the resumption of operations. A similar statement was emitted by the American Petroleum Institute, which warned that without expeditious processing of permits by the government, “the moratorium will give way to a de facto moratorium.”

Yes, it’s different in the gulf. Californians can afford to support environmental protection rules because our state’s economy is nowhere near as reliant on oil drilling as Louisiana’s. But that doesn’t really excuse the shortsightedness of Louisiana’s political class, which still hasn’t grasped that its state was host to the worst oil spill in U.S. history just six months ago. Lawmakers beholden to the oil and gas industry (and concerned about jobless constituents) are furious that common-sense safety standards aimed at preventing a repeat catastrophe might slow the rush to get back to work; in Landrieu’s case, they’re not even above abusing the Senate’s procedures by obstructing a nomination that’s completely unrelated to the moratorium. A smaller oil-rig accident that fouled Santa Barbara’s beaches in 1969 ended expansion of drilling off the California coast and sparked the national environmental movement. Many Louisiana politicians, by contrast, would rather return to business as usual and forget that the BP disaster ever happened.

It did. It’s not just unrealistic to expect a return to the lax regulatory standards that were in place before the spill; it’s mind-bogglingly irresponsible. The new rules, which call for independent inspections and require that rig operators submit plans for preventing and responding to a blowout, are not unnecessarily burdensome. And there’s still more to do — Congress should pass a bill to make the reforms permanent, reexamine the liability cap on damages and beef up the industry’s spill-response capacity. That will probably fly in Louisiana about as well as a pelican covered with tar, but the waters of the Gulf of Mexico are a national resource that must be protected.