Today, Judge

Martin Feldman, a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern

District of Louisiana, sided with a drilling company which had argued

that the Obama administration’s blanket,

6-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was

illegal. The drilling company, Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington,

LA, claimed financial distress from the imposition of the moratorium.

In the ruling handed down this afternoon, Judge Feldman agreed, writing

that the administration made an “arbitrary

and capricious” decision that would have an “immeasurable effect on

the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical

present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this

country.” Like many judges presiding in the Gulf region, Feldman owns

lots of energy stocks, including Transocean, Halliburton, and two of

BP’s largest U.S. private shareholders — BlackRock (7.1%) and JP Morgan

Chase (28.3%). Here’s a

list of Feldman’s income in 2008 (amounts listed unless under

$1,000):

In his opinion today, Feldman wrote, “Oil and gas production is quite

simply elemental to Gulf communities.” Indeed, it is so elemental

that the justice system is invested in the oil and gas industry. As TP’s

Ian Millhiser has written, “Industry ties among federal judges are so

widespread that they are beginning to endanger the courts’ ability

to conduct routine business. Last month, so many members of the

right-wing Fifth Circuit were forced to recuse themselves from an appeal

against various energy and chemical companies that there weren’t enough

untainted judges left to allow the court to hear the case.”