A federal judge in New Orleans has overturned a moratorium on deepwater oil drilling, instituted by President Obama at the end of May. The judge said the Interior Department's decision to suspend drilling in the Gulf was arbitrary. Obama, on Tuesday, vowed to appeal the decision.

BP’s legal woes are mounting as oil continues to spill into the Gulf of Mexico. Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that federal authorities will open both civil and criminal inquiries into the Gulf Oil spill.

Internal documents released to The New York Times last week show that BP reported problems mid-March with the undersea well that exploded a month later. However, the company delayed the testing of a critical piece of equipment – the well’s blowout preventer. And some BP engineers expressed concerns about the oil rig's safety as far back as 11 months ago.

To date, at least 88 lawsuits have been filed seeking compensation from the April 21^st oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The rig explosion killed 11 oil workers and the subsequent oil gusher poses a serious threat to the economy and ecology of the entire coastal region.

Over the weekend, BP made major headway in containing the flow of oil still leaking from the site of the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, which ruptured back on April 20. Since that day, oil has flowed into the gulf at a rate of at least 210,000 gallons a day, and some argue that the rate may be as high as 3,000,000. (For comparison, a standard gasoline tanker truck holds 9,000 gallons: Imagine a line of 24 tanker trucks pulling up to the Gulf every day, dumping their crude oil, and driving off.)

Top executives from BP, Transocean and Halliburton – the three companies involved in the massive oil spill that continues to spew in the Gulf Coast – testified on Capitol Hill yesterday, pointing fingers at each other and deflecting blame from their own firms.

Senators were clearly not amused by all the blame game in full swing. "There's this transference of liability, or finger pointing," Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. "There's going to be plenty of time to figure out who is to blame, who is at fault.”

Over the weekend, ice crystals clogged the inside of a 98 ton steel dome that BP hoped would contain the ongoing flood of crude oil spewing from the site of their broken rig. The crystals, called hydrates, which formed inside the dome made the structure too buoyant to settle on to the seabed, where it could have formed a water-tight seal around the site of the oil drainage. As BP plans more attempts to cap the gusher, we listen back to what has been tried so far.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster isn't the first time massive amounts of oil have gushed into the Gulf of Mexico. In 1979, an exploratory well, Ixtoc I, blew out in the same waters, amounting to the second largest oil spill in world history. And other spills in 1979, 1990 and 1993 have dumped thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. How do these past events inform what may come next, for both human residents of the Gulf coast and the environment as a whole?

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar warned that it could take up to 90 days before an ultimate solution is put in place which could stop the oil still leaking off the coast of Louisiana.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is currently estimated to be roughly the size of Puerto Rico; wind and currents are slowly moving it towards the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

President Obama traveled to Louisiana yesterday for a first-hand briefing on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The "Deepwater Horizon" oil rig exploded on April 20th, rupturing its well and eventually sinking into the Gulf. An estimated 200,000 gallons of oil are gushing into the Gulf each day, as federal government and BP officials frantically explore options to contain the spill.

At least ten state and federal wildlife refuges are in the path of the river of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf Coast is one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life and commercial fishermen are bracing for the worst.

Last week’s vast oil spill just 50 miles into the Gulf of Mexico is already being called one of the most significant oil spills in U.S History; and yesterday, President Obama and the White House made it clear that they have moved clean up efforts to the top of their priority list.  

It looks like the Gulf of Mexico has averted a major ecological disaster after an oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on Tuesday night. A large fire caused the rig to capsize and sink yesterday and officials worried that crude oil could seep into the water. Eleven crew members are still missing and the time frame for their survival is now believed to have passed. But news this morning suggests that at least part of the disaster may have been averted.