Barack Obama, Offshore Oil Drilling | featured news

Months after the nation’s worst oil disaster, the Obama administration will lift its moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the White House announced Tuesday morning.

Energy companies in the Gulf of Mexico will have to permanently plug nearly 3,500 nonproducing wells and dismantle about 650 unused platforms, the Obama administration says.

The Texas attorney general sued the Obama administration on Wednesday over its new deepwater offshore drilling moratorium, claiming that it is unjustified and that federal officials did not contact the state before issuing the ban.

The owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which is spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, on Tuesday criticized President Barack Obama's six-month ban on deepwater drilling.

The president says he'll discuss how BP must pay claims "fairly and quickly" to compensate oil spill victims. He also says he'll name separate commanders for Florida, Alabama and Louisiana to speed response to states' residents.

President Obama previewed part of his Oval Office address in an appearance here Tuesday morning, saying he will talk about the need for BP to pay out claims "quickly and fairly'' to compensate victims of the worst environmental disaster in U.S.

Is President Obama bowing to criticism that he hasn't shown enough emotion and outrage about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? In an interview with the "Today" show's Matt Lauer on Tuesday morning, the president offered his bluntest response yet about the disaster, telling Lauer he's been talking to experts about "whose ass to kick" when it comes to responsibility for the mess.

President Barack Obama will meet with the leaders of a panel he created to probe the worst oil spill in U.S. history on Tuesday, as a giant slick from BP's blown-out Gulf of Mexico well poses a new threat to the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama.

President Barack Obama will announce on Thursday that a moratorium on deepwater oil drilling will continue for six months while a commission studies the reasons for the Gulf of Mexico spill, a White House aide said.

Former FEMA director Michael Brown is not backing off his charge that the Obama administration wants to use the Gulf Coast oil spill as a plot to put an end to offshore drilling.

In a reversal of a long-standing ban on most offshore drilling, President Obama is allowing oil drilling 50 miles off Virginia's shore.