Despite the growing political and environmental fallout from the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, Louisiana politicians say the moratorium on offshore drilling is further harming the region's already wounded economy.
State officials say that the temporary ban has come as the region's other key industry – fishing – is also crippled, putting their economy in a dangerous tailspin.
"For God's sake, don't finish us off with a moratorium," Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said this week.
Though scorn continues to mount against BP and the calamitous oil spill, many officials in the region believe the drilling moratorium is an overreaction.
Washington announced a six-month ban in order to review contingency plans in the event of another oil spill.
Still, the resource industry is the central plank of the Louisiana economy, bringing billions into state coffers and employing thousands.
However, federal government scientists have learned that the spill may be worse than previously feared. New estimates say that up to 2.1 million gallons of oil had been leaking daily up until recently -- nearly twice as much as the previous estimate.
If true, persuading Washington to lift the drilling ban could be an impossible task for state officials, who have nonetheless voted unanimously to shorten the drilling ban.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama spent Thursday visiting with the families of the 11 workers who died during the April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig.
New measures, cost figures from BP
BP said Thursday it has spent $1.43 billion cleaning up the unprecedented oil spill, a disaster that has halved the oil company's market value and wreaked havoc upon several coastal U.S. states.
BP's blue-chip stock is down almost 50 per cent -- a drop of almost $90 billion in market value -- from its level prior to the April 20 rig disaster.
Analysts said some investors were being too aggressive selling off their shares of BP -- a company that has good financial fundamentals despite being the brunt of frequent criticisms in the wake of the oil spill.
At the start of Thursday's trading, BP shares dropped to 11 per cent to a 13-year-low in London. But they recovered some value by end of trading.
The company is under considerable scrutiny in the wake of the oil spill disaster, with U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently pledging to ask BP to compensate thousands of laid-off oil workers, in addition to paying for to costly environmental clean-up.
BP also said it would increase the amount of oil being captured from the undersea well by employing a semi-submersible drilling rig. Under this method, the oil would be collected, sent down a boom and burned at sea.
Kent Wells, the oil company's senior vice president of exploration and production, said the rig would help BP get rid of an additional 420,000 gallons of oil each day -- on top of the 756,000 gallons of daily oil that is being processed through a drill ship already at the scene.
BP spokesperson Mark Proegler denied suggestions that the company has been dragging its feet in response to damage claims from people whose sea-side livelihoods have been disrupted.
In some cases, Proegler said BP is issuing cheques in 48 hours, down from the 45 days it was initially taking the company to sort through claims if the necessary documentation was supplied. The company says it has processed 18,000 claims so far, though it acknowledged that thousands of others are waiting for payment.
The company has also been taken to task by U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the crisis for the federal government.
Allen wrote a letter to BP stating a need for "complete, ongoing transparency into BP's claims process including detailed information on how claims are being evaluated, how payment amounts are being calculated and how quickly claims are being processed."
With files from The Associated Press
