ATP OIL & GAS : Court Enters Final Judgment on Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Drilling Permits

05/24/2011| 08:10am US/Eastern

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A U.S. District Court on May 20, 2011 entered a Final Judgment finding the United States government "... acted unlawfully by unreasonably delaying action on each of the nine permit applications at issue in this case." The Court stated that the law "... establishes a non discretionary duty on the Department of the Interior to act on OCSLA drilling permits within a reasonable time." The Final Judgment and the Order and Reasons were entered in the case of Ensco Offshore Co. and ATP Oil & Gas Corporation v. Salazar, et al, 2:10-cv-01941, U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

On May 27, 2010 the U.S. Department of Interior imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling and suspended the issuance of new permits. On October 12, 2010, the U.S. government lifted the final moratorium.

The Court referred specifically to two permits that were submitted, but which were not acted on by the government within thirty days, stating "That with respect to the two ATP Oil & Gas Corporation permit applications at issue that have already been approved, it is further declared that Defendants acted unlawfully by (i) unreasonably delaying and not acting on ATP's application[s]..." within thirty days of being submitted. ATP's two permits were not granted until March 18, 2011 and April 7, 2011, more than five months after the final moratorium was lifted.

In explaining the thirty day timeline for government action in its Order and Reasons issued May 10, 2011, the Court wrote that, "The thirty-day timeline is reasonable, in part because the government has failed to establish that the individual permit applications pending in this case individually require more (or less) care. The Court has repeatedly acknowledged that some delays are understandable in a more regulated environment, but that now, over a year after the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, delays must reach some end. Without evidence showing otherwise, a thirty-day timeline derived from the statute and past practices remains reasonable. And as this Court has previously explained, thirty days seems to have Congress's acknowledgment as reasonable within the statutory plan."

About ATP Oil & Gas Corporation

ATP Oil & Gas Corporation (ATP) is engaged in the development and production of oil and natural gas in the offshore Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean Sea and the North Sea. ATP established itself as a deepwater operator in the Gulf of Mexico Garden Banks area with the subsea Ladybug wells in 2000. With its proven abilities in the utilization of subsea technologies, ATP is aggressively expanding its development activities internationally into the historically productive region of the North Sea and into the Mediterranean Sea. The company trades publicly as ATPG on the NASDAQ Global Select Market. For more information about ATP Oil & Gas Corporation, visit www.atpog.com.

ATP Oil & Gas Corporation, Houston
T. Paul Bulmahn, 713-622-3311
Chairman and CEO
or
Albert L. Reese Jr., 713-622-3311
Chief Financial Officer
www.atpog.com

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