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(AP) -- The owner of the broken Deepwater Horizon rig that is spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico has criticized the U.S. government's six-month ban on deepwater drilling in the area.

Transocean Ltd. president Steven Newman said Tuesday on the sidelines of an oil conference in London there were things President Barack Obama's administration "could implement today that would allow the industry to go back to work tomorrow without an arbitrary six-month time limit."

Transocean owns the Deepwater rig, which is run by British oil company BP PLC. An April 20 explosion on the rig killed 11 workers and set off worst oil spill in U.S. history.

A U.S. federal judge is mulling whether to lift the moratorium on new deepwater drilling imposed by Obama and will decide by tomorrow.

For more news & multimedia on the Gulf oil crisis, visit our Oil Spill section. 

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