Barack Obama, Deepwater 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.

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 Obama administration scrambled on Tuesday to resurrect a ban on deepwater oil drilling after a U.S. judge declared that its six-month moratorium was too broad and arbitrary, despite the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

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.

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.