HOUSTON -- The Coast Guard is beginning to pull back from oil spill cleanup duties in states hit by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Officials at a Coast Guard district office in New Orleans announced yesterday that its direct response to the spill in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama will wind down this month.

Offshore drillers now have a lighter, more manageable means for controlling a potential well blowout and spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sens. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) will take the reins of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing this week on the state of restoration efforts in the Gulf of Mexico three years after the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

New York City filed a federal lawsuit against BP PLC on Friday in an effort to recover pension funds lost following the oil giant's 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill.

The case accuses BP of making fraudulent claims both before the Gulf of Mexico spill and immediately after, including the amount of oil spewing from the Macondo well and how much it would cost to clean up.

HOUSTON -- Anadarko Petroleum Corp. announced last week that it has made a promising discovery in a new offshore drilling frontier in the ultra-deep water of the Gulf of Mexico.

Calling this new find "the third significant deepwater success this year," Bob Daniels, a senior vice president for deepwater exploration, said his firm thus far is seeing strong signs that 2013 will turn out to be a stellar year for its Gulf of Mexico exploration program.