Oil companies can once again drill the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico

The US administration has announced that it will allow 13 oil companies to resume deep-sea drilling without any new environmental studies, which was made a requirement after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The government said that this is not a violation of an earlier promise to set stricter conditions for underwater exploitation, as the decision applies to companies that have already started seabed drilling.

The administration announced this after the disaster caused by the release of oil from the source of the "British Petroleum" company, in April of last year, when a moratorium was introduced on submarine oil extraction in the Gulf of Mexico.

Although that decision was lifted in October, seabed drilling at depths greater than 5.000 feet (1,5 km) has not yet begun.

Now the government only says that those 13 companies must comply with the new rules before they can resume work on 16 wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Of that number, 13 wells are exploratory, in order to find out if and how much oil there is in that place.

The administration is under a lot of pressure from the oil industry, politicians from the Gulf of Mexico region, as well as Republicans, to start undersea oil exploitation as soon as possible.

A deep-sea drilling moratorium imposed last spring is estimated to have resulted in the temporary loss of between 8.000 and 12.000 jobs.

The list of 13 companies includes: "ATP Oil & Gas Corp.", "BHP Billiton Petroleum (GOM) Inc.", "Chevron USA Inc.", "Cobalt International Energy", "ENI US Operating Co. Inc.”, “Hash Corp.”, “Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corp.”, “Marathon Oil Co.”, “Murphy Exploration & Production Co.-USA”, “Noble Energy Inc.”, “Shell Offshore Inc .”, “Statoil USA E & P Inc.”, as well as “Walter Oil & Gas Corp.”