President Obama on Thursday will announce a six-month ban on drilling new deepwater oil wells, the White House said, and cancel plans for exploratory drilling and new lease sales off the coast of Alaska, as well as a proposed lease sale off the Virginia coast.

The clampdown on comes as the president prepares to make public the results of a 30-day safety review of off-shore drilling that was ordered after the calamitous explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting spill is creating the most serious environmental crisis in the United States in decades.

Read the entire Washington Post article here.