How exactly is this going to help?  Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Russia and any other nation that drills off shore for oil has not stopped. What does Obama expect to accomplish by stopping drilling and exploring for oil?

Via the WaPo:

President Obama ordered a halt Thursday to drilling operations at all 33 exploratory deep-water rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for as long as six months, one of several steps he announced at a news conference where he sought to defend his administration’s handling of the spill.

Most of the measures, including a six-month moratorium on new wells, concern future operations. But in perhaps the most dramatic shift, Obama ordered nearly three dozen existing rigs or others preparing to drill to stop operation pending the findings of a presidential commission. Production rigs in deep water may continue to operate, and exploratory drilling in shallow water will continue, White House officials said.

At the news conference, Obama attempted to portray his administration as vigilant in overseeing the response operation since BP’s Deepwater Horizon well exploded and sank April 20. He said he has had more meetings on the spill — which he called “a tragedy” — than on any other topic since the Afghanistan strategy review last fall.

“The American people should know that from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort,” Obama told journalists gathered in the White House East Room for his first formal news conference in 10 months.

Obama appeared defensive throughout much of the hour-long appearance, particularly in trying to define his administration’s role in stopping the leak and cleaning up an environmental threat that has surpassed the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. Opinion polls show that only a minority of Americans approve of the way Obama has handled the disaster, and he noted several times Thursday that he understood the anger and frustration of Gulf Coast residents watching oil lap ashore.

Team Obama has been all over the oil spill since ‘day one’.

By the way, those nifty electric cars that Greens and Democrats are so in love with, contain large amounts of lightweight plastics that are manufactured from… Oil.