Economies and short cuts by BP and other firms contributed to last year's disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a damning official inquiry has found.

A rapid recovery?

Outlook In the end, of course, it is all about the money. The Energy and Climate Change Committee's announcement today that a moratorium on deep-water drilling off the coast of the UK should not be imposed does not imply there is no risk of the sort of disaster seen in the Gulf of Mexico last summer. Whatever your views about the safety record of oil and gas explorers, that risk can never be entirely discounted. No, this is a decision based on a head-headed economic view: that such is the demand for oil and the cost of switching to less risky alternative sources of energy, deepwater drilling needs to continue.

Britain lacks the ability to deal with a large-scale North Sea oil spill in bad weather conditions but nonetheless should allow oil companies to continue deep water drilling off the coast, MPs will say today.

Outlook Not a bad start to the year for BP investors, who saw the oil giant's shares put on almost 6 per cent yesterday thanks to rumours that Shell has been sizing it up.

Horrors unfold in this book like a revenger's tragedy, as lines in the Mexican gangster's codebook are constantly crossed. It becomes acceptable to target the spouses and children of a murdered rival in the drugs trade. Then the guests who attend the funeral; then the police investigating the case; then their families in turn. The ripples of violence spread out inexorably. Bodies are left hanging from traffic bridges for dawn commuters to see, often with a warning message displayed beside them. Those are the bodies that have not been dissolved in the acid baths.

The Obama administration will maintain a long-standing oil drilling ban in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida after considering loosening it before the BP spill, a senior administration official told The Associated Press today.

A radical shake-up of the UK's North Sea oil industry is expected next year.

Delays to deep water oil production in the wake of the devastating Gulf of Mexico spill could reduce global capacity by one million barrels of oil per day, inflating fuel prices and hitting the economy, British company bosses will warn today.

Troubled oil giant BP is expected to start drilling for oil in Ghadames basin in the Sahara desert next month, a milestone in its controversial deal with Libya.

Greenpeace has launched legal action to try to halt deepwater oil drilling off the UK.