Washington (Platts)--18Jun2012/303 pm EDT/1903 GMT

ATP Oil & Gas Corp has sued the US Department of the Interior, alleging the company incurred more than $60 million in costs as a result of the 2010 post-Macondo deepwater drilling moratorium and subsequent delay in issuing drilling permits.

The lawsuit was filed June 14 in the US Court of Federal Claims in Washington. The federal court has jurisdiction over contracts between private entities and the US government.

The lawsuit claims Interior breached its obligations under Gulf of Mexico exploration leases when it "improperly and illegally suspended all deepwater offshore drilling activities" in the wake of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf.

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ATP also claims it suffered additional damages when the US "unreasonably and unlawfully delayed the issuance of drilling permits after the lifting of the formal moratoria."

In the lawsuit, ATP, an offshore oil and gas development and production company based in Houston, claims the moratorium and subsequent delay in permitting forced the company to terminate one drilling rig contract at a cost of $15.2 million, and to pay for the use of two idled drilling rigs under other contracts.

ATP said it continued to pay Diamond Offshore in excess of $25 million to keep a rig under contract while it waited for a drilling permit. And the company said it suffered damages "in the millions of dollars" due to the underutilization of its Titan and Innovator production platforms.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ordered a six-month halt on deepwater drilling in May 2010. A federal court overturned that order as being "arbitrary and capricious." Salazar then issued a second moratorium, which he lifted in October 2010.

The first drilling permits were not issued, however, until March 2011, after two industry groups successfully tested well capping and containment devices required under stricter safety rules issued after Deepwater Horizon.

ATP, along with driller Ensco Offshore, previously sued Interior, claiming that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement had deliberately delayed permits even after the moratorium had been lifted. Despite the fact that federal law does not specify any time frame for regulators to rule on individual drilling permits, a federal court judge in May 2011 issued an injunction against BOEMRE, saying 30 days was a "reasonable" time period.

BOEMRE was later split into two separate agencies, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

The US later settled the initial lawsuit with Ensco and ATP, agreeing to rule on specific permit applications with 30 days. But the settlement did not obligate the federal government to stick to the 30-day time frame in the future.

--Gary Gentile, gary_gentile@platts.com
--Edited by Kevin Saville, kevin_saville@platts.com

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