Engineering professor and petroleum industry veteran Michael J. Economides expressed concern over comments made by President Obama's national oil spill commission co-chair, William K. Reilly, advocating a complete safety overhaul of America's oil and gas industry. "It would be absurd for the administration or the oil and gas industry to satisfy demands of a political activist with an ideological bias against traditional fuel and whose only knowledge of how an offshore rig works comes from studying BP's ill-fated Macondo well blowout," Dr. Economides said. "U.S. "Policies coming from the White House wrongly assume BP was operating inside industry norms," Dr. Economides said. As of September 2010, the administration's drilling ban alone had eliminated 20,000 jobs in the Gulf region.