Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Wednesday that he has plans to issue a new drilling freeze which might be refined to reflect the offshore conditions. He was speaking to a Senate subcommittee as he explained that the new order was still being developed.
This is in response to Judge Martin Feldman, a federal court judge in New Orleans overturning the six month ban imposed by the Obama administration on deepwater drilling after the April 20, 2010 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon Oil rig located in the Gulf of Mexico.
The explosion at the BP Plc site has spewed almost 127 million gallons of oil and caused an environmental hazard of monstrous proportions. The drilling ban was imposed on May 27, 2010 during a presidential investigation in to the blast and sinking of Deepwater Horizon 40 miles off Louisiana’s coast.
The moratorium has idled 33 rigs of which five were drilling exploratory wells and 28 were in the development phase according to Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska. The economic repercussions have had people clamoring for modifying the moratorium.