. . .but it is is real? The NY Post editors warn it’s a start, but let’s see what really happens:

The Obama administration has ended its de facto ban on deepwater drilling, issuing on Monday the first permit since the BP spill last April.
That could spell relief for a region that lost 12,000 jobs and billions in business due to Team Obama’s chokehold.
But Gulf Coasters shouldn’t set their hopes too high: The permit awarded to Houston-based Noble Energy isn’t even a new contract — it simply lets the company revive a project frozen last year.
What’s more, it took a truly insane amount of pressure just to squeeze that one permit from the White House:
* Mideast revolutions are threatening oil supplies and sending prices soaring.
* A federal judge in New Orleans held the Interior Department in contempt of court last month for delaying permits.
* Two weeks later, the same judge ordered the feds to approve permits pronto, calling their inaction “inexcusable.”
That is, for the US to begin tapping its vast deepwater reserves, it took a Middle East in flames and judicial fireballs back home — all to re-approve a single existing oil contract.
Michael Bromwich, director of the agency overseeing offshore drilling, said the permit “was issued for a simple reason”: Noble showed it could drill safely.
A convenient tale. But his decisions positively oozes politics, as White House policy has from the first.
The moratorium was technically lifted last November — three weeks before the midterm elections — as a sop to southern states. But no permits came forth.
Now Bromwich approved a permit three days before Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was to go before a hostile House panel Thursday morning.
House Republicans don’t sound fooled.

The rest here.