"Obama tries another moratorium on Gulf Coast deep water oil drilling"

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President Obama on the Gulf Coast, May 2..pic at link.

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July 12, 2010~

"Obama administration took another crack today at imposing a moratorium on deep water oil drilling in the Gulf Coast, saying it remains concerned about safety in the wake of the BP oil spill.

"The president has and continues to believe that we have to be careful with what we're doing, given the uncertainty about what happened 84 days ago," said Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs, referring to the ongoing Gulf Coast oil spill.

A federal judge struck down a previous moratorium, and an appeals court rejected the administration's request to reinstate it. Gibbs said the new moratorium will address the legal concerns raised by the courts, including new evidence of potential safety problems.

Local business owners had sued the administration over the first 60-day moratorium, saying they were being penalized for BP's problems.

In announcing a new moratorium to last until Nov. 30, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said a statement that "I remain open to modifying the new deep water drilling suspensions based on new information, but industry must raise the bar on its practices and answer fundamental questions about deep water safety, blowout prevention and containment, and oil spill response."

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http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/07/obama-to-try-another-moratorium-on-gulf-coast-oil-drilling/1>http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/07/obama-to-try-another-moratorium-on-gulf-coast-oil-drilling/1