Highlights of Obama’s orders on offshore oil drilling safety in response to Gulf oil spill

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Highlights of Obama’s orders on offshore drilling

Highlights of President Barack Obama’s new orders on offshore oil drilling safety. Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar discussed the measures Thursday, but no report was released publicly.

SAFER DRILLING?

Obama ordered a number of changes designed to ensure offshore drilling is safer going forward, based on a 30-day review by Salazar, including:

—Extending a moratorium on new deep water drilling leases for six months, until the presidential commission on the spill completes its work.

—Suspending Shell Oil’s plans to begin exploratory drilling this summer on Arctic leases as far as 140 miles off the Alaska coast. Now those wells will not be considered until 2011.

—Canceling pending lease sales off the coast of Virginia and in the western Gulf of Mexico.

—Suspending action on 33 deep water exploratory wells currently being drilled in the Gulf.

—Salazar announced additional safety measures, including requiring more thorough inspections of the “blowout preventers” designed to prevent oil spills. The blowout preventer on BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig failed.