Oil rig leaves the Gulf of Mexico as President Obama claims he is Business Friendly.

First rig sails away over deep-water drilling ban | Business | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

WASHINGTON — Diamond Offshore announced Friday that its Ocean Endeavor drilling rig will leave the Gulf of Mexico and move to Egyptian waters immediately — making it the first to abandon the United States in the wake of the BP oil spill and a ban on deep-water drilling.

And the Ocean Endeavor's exodus probably won't be the last, according to oil industry officials and Gulf Coast leaders who warn that other companies eager to find work for the now-idled rigs are considering moving them outside the U.S.

Devon Energy Corp. had been leasing the Endeavor to drill in the same region of the Gulf as BP's leaking Macondo well, which has been gushing crude since a lethal blowout April 20.

But Diamond announced Friday it will lease the rig through June 30, 2011, to Cairo-based Burullus Gas Co., which plans to send the Endeavor to Egyptian waters immediately.

Deep Water Rig

Gibbs defended the moratorium, promising an immediate appeal to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Gibbs said President Barack Obama believes that until investigations can determine why the spill happened, continued deepwater drilling potentially exposes workers and the environment to "a danger that the  president does not believe we can afford."

Obama imposed the moratorium on offshore drilling after the BP oil spill along the Gulf Coast, saying the government rashly concluded that because one rig failed, the others are in immediate danger, too. The Interior Department had halted approval of any new permits for  deepwater drilling and suspended drilling of 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama believes strongly that drilling at such depths does not make sense and puts the safety of workers "at a danger that the president does not believe we can afford."

President Barack Obama said he and his administration have pursued a “fundamentally business-friendly” agenda and are “fierce advocates” for the free market, rejecting corporate criticism of his policies. “The irony is, is that on the left we are perceived as being in the pockets of big business; and then on the business side, we are perceived as being anti-business,” Obama said in a
Feb. 9 interview in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands tomorrow. “You would be hard-pressed to identify a piece of legislation that we have proposed out there that, net, is not good for businesses,” he added. He predicted that legislation he will sign this year would cut corporate taxes by about $70 billion.
“Whether we can get it through Congress is always a question because, as we have seen throughout this year, we have a political process in Washington right now that is a little dysfunctional,” Obama said.

This is one thing I agree with President Obama, "The White House is a little dysfunctional right now".

Obama's Gulf Oil Spill

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