AP EXCLUSIVE: Salazar Keeps Oil Drill Ban, for Now

The surface blowout preventer on the Rowan Ralph Coffman oil rig is seen as Interior Secretary Ken...

The surface blowout preventer on the Rowan Ralph Coffman oil rig is seen as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar tours the rig in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, Wednesday, July 28, 2010. The House passed a bill to boost safety standards for offshore drilling and remove a liability cap for oil spills Friday, July 30, 2010, but a partisan fight in the Senate will likely delay action on a response to the Gulf oil spill until Congress returns from its summer recess. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

(AP)

The helicopter passes over the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico — with surprisingly little oil visible on its surface — when out of the sea rises a skyscraper-like structure nearly 350 feet above the waves. The $600 million rig, nearly 100 miles off Louisiana's coast, has a hull larger than a football field and can drill more than 5 miles beneath the ocean floor.

But the gleaming new rig sits idle, shut down by the government's freeze on drilling at 33 ocean wells.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar visited the colossal structure this past week while on a tour of three offshore oil rigs. It was his most extensive tour since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig led to one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history and the unprecedented shutdown of offshore drilling.

Salazar told The Associated Press, which accompanied him on the trip, that he's gathering information to decide whether to revise or even lift the ban, which is scheduled to last until Nov. 30.

Business groups and Gulf Coast political leaders say the shutdown is crippling the oil and gas industry and costing thousands of jobs, even aboard rigs not operated by BP PLC, which is responsible for the Gulf disaster. The freeze "is like punishing the whole class" when a student does something wrong, oil executive John Breed told Salazar during a tour of the Noble Danny Adkins, one of the rigs Salazar visited Wednesday.

Salazar told the AP he believes the industry-wide moratorium imposed after BP's Gulf oil spill was the correct call.

"I think we're in the right direction," he said, adding that the ultimate goal is to allow deepwater operations to resume safely. "We're not there yet," he said.

"I've got a lot of questions about drilling safety," Salazar said. "I learned a lot about the different kinds of rigs out there — the different limitations in terms of (water) depth and equipment and the different zones of risk. It's a complex question."