Washington --

The federal government on Wednesday gave BP approval to launch its first deep-water drilling since the lethal blowout of its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico a year and a half ago.

Under the permit issued by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the British oil giant immediately can begin drilling at its Kaskida field about 192 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Although BP has partnered with other firms on offshore work since the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 people and triggered the nation's worst oil spill, this is the first time the company is being allowed back as the lead operator of an offshore drilling project.

The permit is a milestone for BP and the entire offshore drilling industry, which is still recovering from last year's spill and a subsequent moratorium on some deep-water exploration, said Sean Shafer, a senior market analyst with Quest Offshore Resources in Texas.

"If the gulf is going to get back to where it is before, before the spill and the moratorium, it'd be hard to do that without BP being a part of that," Shafer said. "They are the largest producer (in) offshore Gulf of Mexico."

BP plans to drill the newly approved well in 6,034 feet of water - about 1,000 feet deeper than its doomed Macondo project. Drilling could begin within days using Seadrill's 3-year-old West Sirius semi-submersible rig.

As part of its permit application, BP vowed to abide by drilling safety and environmental mandates imposed since last year's spill, as well as a suite of voluntary performance standards. Those safeguards go beyond federal requirements and include backup emergency equipment and engineer-witnessed testing of cement used in wells.

For instance, the company will use a second set of pipe-cutting shear rams on the emergency blowout preventer that will help secure the new well, doubling the opportunities for the device to successfully slash through drill pipe and trap flowing gas and oil underground in case of an emergency.

Cameron International, the same Houston company that manufactured the blowout preventer used at the Macondo well, built the one installed on the West Sirius rig.

"BP has met all of the enhanced safety requirements that we have implemented and applied consistently over the past year," the safety bureau director, Michael Bromwich, said in a statement. But some environmentalists, who are already angry with the Obama administration's decision to delay an ozone pollution rule, accused the White House of siding with the oil industry.

Jacqueline Savitz, a senior campaign director with the conservation group Oceana, said the administration seems "to be more responsive to Big Oil than they are to the public, which is still reeling from the last BP debacle."