RENEE MONTAGNE, Host: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, Host: And I'm Mary Louise Kelly.</s>MARY LOUISE KELLY, Host: The Obama administration has, again, issued a moratorium on new deep-water oil drilling. The federal courts blocked the administration's earlier ban as an overreaction to the BP oil spill. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY: The new moratorium effectively keeps a lid on deep-water drilling in the Gulf through the end of November. But this time the administration has gone to greater lengths to justify its action.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY: The Interior Department cites what it calls new evidence that deep-water blowout preventers are not as fail-safe as they were thought to be. It also suggests the industry would be hard-pressed to cope with another spill, since cleanup crews are already stretched thin responding to BP's.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY: White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says, given those concerns, it makes sense to hold off drilling for now.</s>ROBERT GIBBS: We know that that is now without some economic consequences to the region. But it's imperative that we have a sense of what happened before we continue to do this again.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY: The administration says it's open to lifting the moratorium before November 30th, but only if the industry shows it can drill safely.</s>SCOTT HORSLEY: Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.
The Interior Department announced a new deep-water drilling moratorium on Monday. The initial six-month ban had come under political fire as Gulf residents feared the loss of jobs, and a federal court said the government hadn't made a case for putting the ban into effect immediately.