Jake Tapper:

An Obama administration official says that President Obama has canceled the August offshore drilling lease sale in the Western Gulf and the lease sale off the coast of Virginia.
The announcement comes as the president and his administration face increased criticism for the failure of BP and the government to plug the leak and further contain the significant ecological damage to the region, and as he prepares to travel to the Gulf for a second time tomorrow.
“The president’s eyes have been opened” as to the risks of offshore drilling, a senior White House official tells ABC News, in terms of the inability of the Minerals Management Service to reliably regulate the industry, and the inaccuracy of claims by the oil industry that companies are able to stop catastrophes like these from happening, and in the event that they do happen that the industry can contain the damage.
All of those assumptions have been proven false, the senior White House official told ABC News. So for now projects are being canceled or delayed.

And as Kirsten Powers, who slams the President in today’s New York Post rightly points out:

Since the “blame BP” strategy isn’t working, Obama will today announce tougher safety requirements and more rigorous inspections for offshore drilling operations. Sounds nice — except the problem isn’t a lack of safety requirements, it’s that the experts at the US Minerals Management Service ignored the existing requirements.
In fact, it was under Salazar’s reign that the MMS approved BP’s drilling without getting the permits required by law for drilling that might harm endangered species. The agency routinely overruled warnings regarding the safety and environmental impact of drilling proposals in the Gulf.
None of this was a secret.
It also shouldn’t be a secret that no matter how many inspections and safety requirements you have, you can’t ever completely prevent disasters like this one. If you’re going to permit offshore drilling, be prepared to respond to a spill.
If he promised us anything, Obama promised us competence. Instead, we’ve gotten the Keystone Cops.