BP PLC will face hundreds of civil lawsuits over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in federal court in New Orleans, a panel of federal judges ruled today.

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in Boise, Idaho, agreed to consolidate the lawsuits -- ranging from rig workers' wrongful death cases to lost revenue claims from Gulf Coast businesses -- in federal court in New Orleans. Securities-related cases from investors will be consolidated in Houston and presided over by Judge Keith Ellison.

"Upon careful consideration, we have settled upon the Eastern District of Louisiana as the most appropriate district for this litigation," the panel ruled. "Without discounting the spill's effects on other states, if there is a geographic and psychological 'center of gravity' in this docket, then the Eastern District of Louisiana is closest to it."

The choice of New Orleans is a boon for the city and the plaintiffs who won't have to travel as far. In making their choice, the judges rejected the notion that New Orleans would not provide a level playing field for all parties.

"With all due respect, we disagree with the premise of this argument. When federal judges assume the bench, all take an oath to administer justice in a fair and impartial manner to all parties equally," the panel wrote.

Judge Carl Barbier will preside over the more than 300 suits. The judges on the panel said they chose Barbier because he has experience with consolidated litigation and is already involved in managing dozens of oil disaster cases.

The judges stopped short of making a definitive ruling on a liability limitation request brought by Transocean Ltd., which owns the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Transocean in May asked a federal court in Houston to limit its liability to just less than $27 million under an 1851 law that limits a vessel owner to the post-accident value of the vessel and its cargo as long as the owner can show he or she had no knowledge of negligence in the accident.

The Idaho panel said those proceedings could be a "potential tag-along action" in this docket and will be included on a conditional transfer order. But the judges did not make a definitive ruling.

BP has set aside $32.2 billion to pay spill costs and legal claims. Plaintiffs are seeking billions in damages.

Obama's spill panel questions moratorium

The presidential commission investigating the spill has asked the Obama administration if its ban on deepwater drilling should be lifted for certain rigs.

The panel asked Michael Bromwich, head of the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, for information about the moratorium.

"We are particularly interested in whether individual rigs, or categories of rigs, subject to the moratorium are sufficiently safe to allow the moratorium to be lifted," the commission wrote in a letter to Bromwich.

The current drilling pause was imposed on July 12 after a federal judge overturned Interior's initial six-month moratorium. But the current ban is expected to last as long. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the suspension will remain in place until companies can show they can prevent major spills.

Administration officials, including Bromwich, have said the moratorium could be lifted early.

The leaders of the president's panel investigating the spill had previously said they would not have the resources to evaluate rig safety or the industry's ability to respond to a spill. But the letter asks for information on how the agency is evaluating rig safety.

William Reilly, one of the co-chairs of the panel, told The Washington Post yesterday that he could not see why the administration needed six months to vet the safety of the 33 deepwater rigs in question.

"The commission has sent a letter to the Bipartisan Policy Center requesting it to organize a group of experts ... to essentially frame the questions that should be asked relative to what is necessary to resume prudently drilling in deep water in the Gulf, and we expect to have those questions in the next few weeks and refer them to the Interior Department," Reilly said.

Weather delays relief well operations once again

An approaching storm has forced BP to stall relief well drilling operations, the top federal official in charge of the response effort said this morning.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said a tropical disturbance will delay the relief well's completion for two to three days and will push back a final well-plugging procedure until early next week.

The relief well is within 30 feet of intercepting the Macondo well, Allen said. Crews will install a temporary plug to secure the well until the storm passes.

But there is a chance the relief well won't be needed to plug the well for good, Allen said. For weeks, he and BP officials have stressed the necessity of the bottom kill operation, but the well may already be dead.

Pressure tests will be taken today to determine the condition of the annulus -- a space between the metal lining of the well and the rocky wellbore. If tests show no oil and gas flowing from the reservoir into the space, then the relief well and the bottom kill operation may not be needed, Allen said.

The weather system is currently located about 100 miles southwest of Florida and has a 70 percent chance of forming a tropical depression in the next two days.

NOAA opens more fishing areas

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration today reopened just over 5,000 square miles of Gulf waters that had been closed to fishing.

The announcement leaves 22 percent of federal waters in the Gulf closed to fishing -- down from the peak when fishing was banned in more than one-third of the seafood-rich Gulf.

The federal government first closed areas of the Gulf on May 2 in response to the oil spill and has shifted the closures as oil drifted through the Gulf. The area opened today has not shown any oil since July 3, according to federal surveys, and trajectory models show the area is at low risk for future exposure. NOAA officials also found no "detectable" oil or dispersant pollution in 153 finfish from the area.

NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco hailed the reopening and said consumers should feel confident in seafood purchases from the Gulf. But Lubchenco noted that the long-term effects of the oil on the ecosystem are still unknown.

"Some of the impacts of the oil are immediate and obvious, like the oiling of turtles or birds, but the other impacts of the spill, especially those beneath the surface, are by nature more difficult to evaluate," Lubchenco told reporters today. "We won't know for some time the full impact, in terms of the species and the ecosystem at large."

Lubchenco said the oil could potentially harm future generations of marine life, since it is suspected to have an effect on eggs and larvae of fish, crab, shrimp and other species. She said researchers are monitoring the effects of subsurface oil in an attempt to piece together a more comprehensive standard of its effects.

Today's reopening of fisheries, effective at 6 p.m., will allow fishing in areas 115 miles northeast of the Deepwater/BP wellhead.

Reporter Allison Winter contributed.