I did not expect Judge Feldman to grant the stay, customary in cases to be appealed. Either his person oil interests render him too corrupt, or his GOP ideology renders him too activist, or both.

The Obama administration’s efforts to suspend deepwater oil drilling were dealt another setback in court on Thursday when the federal judge who struck down the administration’s six-month moratorium refused to delay the decision’s effects.

The Interior Department petitioned Judge Martin L.C. Feldman of the United States District Court in New Orleans to grant a stay of his decision, which lifted a ban on new drilling projects and on work on the 33 rigs already in place in the Gulf.

But Judge Feldman said he was denying the delay for the same reasons he gave for his June 22 decision: that the moratorium was doing “irreparable harm” to the businesses in the gulf that depend on drilling activity and that the government had not given sufficient basis for the moratorium.

The White House imposed the moratorium in May, about a month after a fatal explosion and fire on April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which left an undersea well spewing crude oil into the gulf. The moratorium, intended to give time for improvements in rig safety measures, was “blanket, generic, indeed punitive,” the judge ruled.

Judge Feldman said on Thursday that the Interior Department now had 30 days to comply with his June 22 decision, a longer time than the 21 days he originally specified in his ruling. The government’s appeal of the ruling will be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Meanwhile, Ken Salazar, the Interior secretary, plans to reintroduce the moratorium in another version in the next several days, emphasizing why the moratorium is necessary in answer to the judge’s criticism.

Judge Feldman’s ruling on Thursday, denying the stay, held few surprises, given his ruling on Tuesday, but it did not mean that drilling would resume immediately.

“Does this mean companies are going to rush back to work?” asked Andy Radford, the senior policy advisor for offshore issues with the American Petroleum Institute. “There are probably too many unknowns to get a large-scale resumption of work at this point.”

Mr. Radford said Mr. Salazar has been talking about a “flexible” moratorium that could be more beneficial than the original blanket ban. It could identify “a framework where companies can meet safety requirements and have equipment inspected and get back to work while we figure what exactly is going on,” Mr. Radford said… [emphasis added]