The White House has vowed to push through a new moratorium on offshore drilling after a judge in New Orleans issued an injunction against President Obama’s previous ban.

District Judge Martin Feldman ruled that Obama’s administration had acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in issuing a six month moratorium on all offshore drilling of deepwater wells in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

“The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an unprecedented, sad, ugly and inhuman disaster,” wrote Feldman. “What seems clear is that the federal government has been pressed by what happened on the Deepwater Horizon into an otherwise sweeping confirmation that all Gulf deepwater drilling activities put us all in a universal threat of irreparable harm.”

He ruled that the companies that challenged the moratorium “suffered and will continue to suffer irreparable harm” due the ban.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Obama’s press secretary quickly pledged to issue a new moratorium (Salazar statement, press statement).

“The decision to impose a moratorium on deepwater drilling was and is the right decision,” said Salazar. “We see clear evidence every day, as oil spills from BP’s well, of the need for a pause on deepwater drilling.”

UPDATE – a number of media outlets are reporting that Feldman’s financial disclosure form shows he owned shares in oil companies including Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon (disclosure form, Guardian article, SF Chronicle article).

Image: Offshore drilling unit Development Driller III prepares to drill a relief well at the Deepwater Horizon site on 18 May / US Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Kelley.