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Exxon Mobil Corp. has made one of the largest oil and gas finds in the Gulf of Mexico in a decade, the company announced today. The oil major said it made two oil discoveries and a natural gas discovery in its Keathley Canyon blocks, including an oil discovery in the company’s first exploration well since last year’s moratorium on deep-water drilling. Exxon expects the combined finds to yield more than 700 million barrels of oil equivalent. More than 85 percent would be oil, the company said. Drilling early in 2010 turned up oil and natural gas at the well 250...

Look -- it's an October Mini-Surprise! It's midterm-election time, the Democrats are cratering -- and Inte rior Secretary Ken Salazar this week announced that he's lifting the moratorium that the White House imposed on deepwater offshore-oil and gas drilling after the Gulf of Mexico spill. The move came six weeks earlier than expected, and followed the promulgation of some new safety rules said to ensure against future well blowouts. "I have decided that it is now appropriate to lift the suspension," said Salazar, adding: "We are open for business." And of course it's just a coincidence that there are US...

Very few offshore oil and natural gas drilling rigs will actually resume activity within the first month the deepwater drilling moratorium is lifted in the Gulf of Mexico, a top Interior Department official said Monday. "Even when the moratorium is lifted, you won't see drilling going on the next day or even the next week," Michael Bromwich, head of the Interior Department's new Bureau of Ocean Management, Regulation, and Enforcement said during testimony in front of the Oil Spill Commission on Monday. He said it would be difficult for the oil and gas industry to comply with new safety requirements,...

President Obama has a drilling moratorium preventing U.S. companies from deepwater drilling. At the same time the U.S. is loaning money to PEMEX, the Mexican state owned oil company, to help boost its drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. From Fox News: "Despite President Obama's moratorium on U.S. deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. Export-Import Bank intends to guarantee $1 billion in loans to PEMEX, the Mexican state oil company, to bolster the company's oil drilling in the region." "The bank, which is the official American export credit agency, loaned more than $1 billion to PEMEX in...

The House voted Friday to end the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, though Republicans and a Louisiana industry group said it gives too much discretion to the Interior Department and provides no guarantees drilling will resume quickly. The amendment -- sponsored by Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville -- was added to a sweeping offshore drilling regulatory bill that would eliminate the $75 million cap on oil-company liability for spills, codify the reorganization of the much-maligned Minerals Management Services, and give the presidential commission investigating the BP rig-spill subpoena power. 27 0 35 Share The bill, which Republicans said could harm smaller...

The negative impact of a moratorium on deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is apparent to almost everyone but President Obama and his team of radicals at the Interior Department. A recent Bloomberg poll showed that 73 percent of Americans opposed the moratorium and the opposition in Louisiana is even stronger. Last week, over 20,000 fired-up Louisiana residents staged a massive rally in Lafayette protesting the idiotic moratorium. The outpouring of opposition to the moratorium received scant national media coverage, but it was a significant display of political unity in Louisiana. In our state, Democrats and Republicans alike...

The Obama administration is set today to impose a new ban on deep-water drilling -- this time carefully rewritten in hopes of solving the problems that prompted a federal court to toss out the first attempt. An administration official confirmed the new moratorium -- likely to come in the form of a "notice to lessees" -- will be issued later today. The new directive is expected to replace NTL No. 4, the May 30 order that imposed the moratorium first announced by President Barack Obama three days earlier. The administration has lost three bids to preserve the ban in federal...

Diamond Offshore announced on Friday that it will be the first company to relocate one of its oil rigs from the Gulf of Mexico to Egyptian waters due to the Obama Administration’s ban on drilling. Chron.com reported: Diamond Offshore announced Friday that its Ocean Endeavor drilling rig will leave the Gulf of Mexico and move to Egyptian waters immediately — making it the first to abandon the United States in the wake of the BP oil spill and a ban on deep-water drilling. And the Ocean Endeavor’s exodus probably won’t be the last, according to oil industry officials and Gulf...

Judge denies Obama admin stay on drill ban ruling 10 mins ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A judge refused on Thursday to put on hold his decision that blocked the Obama administration from enforcing its six-month ban on deepwater oil drilling after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans rejected a request by the Obama administration to stay his decision that allowed deepwater drilling to resume after the Department of Interior ordered it halted temporarily when the BP Plc well began gushing oil more than two months ago.

Last month I went into extended detail about the story called Crime Inc. Exposed by Glenn Beck, Crime Inc. is a web of liberal and progressive organizations that leave a trail all the way to the White House and President Obama. Cap and Trade is the flag all of the players rally in Crime Inc. rally around. Mr. Beck added another twist to the story, as if it was not spooky enough already. Only now the central theme is George Soros. First let me lay out who the major players are, but please do not get lost in the details:...

Instead of an oil spill commission staffed with experts, as promised in his Oval Office address, the president has announced a panel with membership that reads like a Who's Who of radical environmentalism. Former Senator Graham of Florida, for example, has consistently pushed for a ban on oil drilling, and Frances Beinecke of the National Resources Defense Council has argued for the global warming agenda -- including linking "global poverty" to global warming, an argument used at the Copenhagen conference to support reparations to be paid to nations such as Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe for our supposed global crimes. In fact,...

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will issue a new order imposing a moratorium on deepwater drilling after a federal judge struck down the existing one. Salazar said in a statement Tuesday evening that the new order will contain additional information making clear why the six-month drilling pause was necessary in the wake of the Gulf oil spill.

Motions for Preliminary Injunctions are called "extraordinary relief" for good reason. They are rarely granted...They are based upon a pleading, filed prior to a full hearing, which claims that if the Court does not intervene, serious and irreparable injury and harm will result to the party who seeks the remedy. When the Court does intervene, the party who sought the remedy from the Court has shown "a substantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits" as well as a "substantial threat of irreparable injury" without such a drastic judicial action by the Court This is a very well written, carefully researched...

NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge in New Orleans has blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects that was imposed in response to the massive Gulf oil spill. Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs had asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium. President Barack Obama's administration has halted the approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling at 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf. Feldman says in his ruling that the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning for the...

<p>A judge blocked the six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling imposed by the Obama administration after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a ruling the White House immediately said it would appeal.</p> <p>Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs had asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium.</p>

A trio of oil companies led by Chevron Corp. has tapped a petroleum pool deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico that has the potential to boost the nation's reserves by more than 50 percent. A test well indicates it could be the biggest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay more than a generation ago. But the vast oil deposit about four miles beneath the ocean floor won't significantly reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil and won't help lower prices at the pump anytime soon. "It's a nice positive, but the U.S. still has a big difference between its...