Washington Post:
The Obama administration may end its ban on deepwater drilling “significantly in advance” of its Nov. 30 expiration date, the administration’s top official in charge of drilling told reporters Tuesday.
Michael Bromwich, who heads the agency that has replaced the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, will hold a series of public forums starting Wednesday in New Orleans. The meetings will explore the current system for drilling and workplace safety, oil and gas containment, and spill response. The eight hearings on the Gulf Coast and in Anchorage, he said, will determine “whether we can develop a level of comfort on all three issues that would enable the [interior] secretary to lift the moratorium in a principled way” before Nov. 30.
In the wake of the BP oil spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar imposed a drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico that has left 33 deepwater wells idle.
In addition to addressing the controversial moratorium, which several oil industry officials and Gulf Coast lawmakers have criticized for delivering an economic blow to the region, Bromwich laid out his vision for creating an assertive federal agency that will police offshore drilling across the country. He noted he has asked the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to lend him prosecutors and agents, respectively, and he is hiring from the private sector to staff an investigations and review unit of eight to 10 people that will explore allegations of wrongdoing within the agency and the drilling industry.
The rest here.