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September 2010

Vol. 15, No. 36 Week of September 05, 2010

District court upholds moratorium ruling

Louisiana District Court Judge Martin Feldman has rejected a request by the U.S. Department of the Interior to dismiss as moot an appeal and associated injunction against Interior’s moratorium on deepwater drilling on the outer continental shelf.

In June Feldman had imposed the injunction against the moratorium, originally imposed by Interior in May and subsequently appealed by a number of oil service companies. Interior appealed the injunction to the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, but on July 12 the agency issued a new drilling moratorium, with different stipulations. Interior simultaneously claimed that the appeal and injunction were moot, since in issuing the new moratorium the agency had withdrawn the original moratorium that had been appealed.

And the 5th Circuit Court referred the case back to the district court, to establish a record for adjudicating on Interior’s claim.

In a Sept. 1 court order Feldman said that Interior cannot sidestep the injunction by issuing a new moratorium that “arguably fashions no substantial changes from the first moratorium.”

“This court has determined that no rational nexus exists between the fact of the tragic Deepwater Horizon blowout and placing an attainder of universal culpability on every other deepwater rig operator in the Gulf of Mexico” and “has determined that the first moratorium is invalid in law,” Feldman said.

—Alan Bailey






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