The Obama Administration approved the first deepwater drilling well permit for the Gulf of Mexico, 11 months after the BP oil disaster. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement announced Monday that it issued a permit to Noble Energy Inc. to continue work on its Santiago well about 70 miles southeast of Venice, [...]

I mentioned back on Wednesday that the White House was considering the enactment of some of the recommendations of the Oil Spill Commission by executive order. Looks like they’re moving forward on that immediately. The Obama administration has announced the creation of an agency to focus exclusively on safety in offshore drilling and production, part [...]

Democratic candidates are already dead in the water in Louisiana, so I wouldn’t term this an October surprise. But Robert Gibbs told reporters today that the Administration would lift their moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico soon, possibly by the end of the week. The moratorium was never meant to be an [...]

The Republican co-chair of the oil spill commission wants an early end to the moratorium on deepwater drilling, citing the improved safeguards already put into place by the Interior Department. He cited the report that the Bipartisan Policy Center provided the panel last week on the moratorium. The think tank’s analysis concluded that Interior has [...]