Gulf oil spill

NEW ORLEANS, June 23 (UPI) -- Obama administration officials promised action to keep their ban on deep-water oil drilling intact after a U.S. federal judge struck down the moratorium.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said he will issue a new order keeping the rigs from operating because halting drilling "was and is the right decision." The White House also promised an appeal of the decision by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans.

Feldman Tuesday released a decision stating the administration's ban on deep-water drilling was invalid.

"The court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium," Feldman's decision reads. "The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger."

U.S. President Barack Obama instituted the ban after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and set off a leak that has spewed tens of thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

Companies argued stopping such drilling caused irreparable harm to the firms and their workers.

Federal authorities expanded the area of the gulf closed to fishing by about 6,000 square miles because of oil contamination. Nearly 87,000 square miles -- about 36 percent of federal waters in the gulf -- are closed to fishing.