Panel could rule on drilling ban before 6 months

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A White House panel probing the BP Plc oil spill began work on Monday and could offer recommendations on the future of deepwater drilling within six months, one of its co-chairmen said.

The seven-member National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill and Offshore Drilling is charged with making recommendations following the April 20 rig explosion and subsequent leak, which has polluted the sea and the shores of three Gulf Coast states.

The worst oil spill in U.S. history prompted the Interior Department to place a 6-month moratorium on U.S. deepwater exploratory drilling to give the commission time to recommend potential safety enhancements.

A federal court struck down the moratorium as too broad. The Interior Department is expected to issue a modified moratorium in coming days. Meanwhile, deepwater drilling is effectively frozen until the industry gets certainty about what the rules will be.

Bob Graham, a former Florida senator and one of the panel's co-chairmen, said the commission could issue interim guidance on deepwater drilling before the six months expire.

The panel, which President Barack Obama established with an executive order, is modeled on previous commissions that looked into the 1986 space shuttle Challenger explosion and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.

The panel will hear from members of the public, as well as representatives from the tourism, fishing and offshore oil drilling industries over the next two days.

Graham said the Interior Department would make final decisions on the drilling moratorium because it was better placed to act on concerns quickly.

"The department is well down the road to answering those core questions. We are having our first meeting today. If there's a sense that this needs to be resolved expeditiously, it's more likely that's going to happen through Interior," Graham said.

(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe and Alexandria Sage, editing by Alan Elsner)