NEW ORLEANS -- A federal judge who overturned the Obama administration's initial six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling refused Wednesday to throw out the court challenge, rejecting the government's claim that the case is moot.
Government lawyers argued that a lawsuit several offshore service companies filed over the May 28 moratorium should be dismissed because it doesn't challenge a new, temporary drilling ban imposed by the Interior Department on July 12.
But U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman rejected that argument, saying the second moratorium is "substantially the same as the first one."
The Justice Department has asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review Feldman's earlier ruling overturning the first moratorium. A three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit originally was scheduled to hear the appeal Wednesday, but they postponed the hearing to seek more information about the July 12 moratorium.
The first moratorium halted approval of any new permits for deepwater projects and suspended drilling on 33 exploratory wells. Feldman said the new moratorium covers the same rigs and "precisely the same deepwater drilling" for the exact same time period as the first.
"Indeed, the defendants only weakly disagree," the judge wrote. "Instead, they focus on the scope and substance of the second decision-making process."
The government said its second moratorium is based in part on more than 6,000 pages of documents created after May 28, but the plaintiff companies say it only makes superficial changes.
Feldman noted that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar publicly stated his intention to issue a new moratorium only hours after the judge overturned the first one on June 22.
"It is difficult to square such public expressions of resoluteness with the government's assertion that its rescission of the first moratorium and its issuance of a new moratorium is entitled to solicitude and should not be considered litigation posturing," he wrote.
A Justice Department spokeswoman and a lawyer for the plaintiff companies, including Covington, La.-based Hornbeck Offshore Services, didn't immediately respond to calls for comment on Wednesday's ruling.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
