The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction today prohibiting the Interior Department from enforcing a six-month moratorium on all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico's Outer Continental Shelf in water at depths greater than 500 feet. See Hornbeck Offshore Services, LLC v. Kenneth Lee "Ken" Salazar, Case No. 10-1663 (you can find copies of the court's decision and order here). The court found, among other things, that the plaintiffs had established a likelihood of successfully showing that the Department acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the moratorium:
After reviewing the Secretary’s Report, the Moratorium Memorandum, and the Notice to Lessees, the Court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium. The Report, invoked by the Secretary, describes the offshore oil industry in the Gulf and offers many compelling recommendations to improve safety. But it offers no time line for implementation, though many of the proposed changes are represented to be implemented immediately. The Report patently lacks any analysis of the asserted fear of threat of irreparable injury or safety hazards posed by the thirty-three permitted rigs also reached by the moratorium.
For more, see this article from the NYT.