Michael Stravato for The New York Times

Kyle Beverly a roustabout on the Seahawk 2007 painted his idled rig a few miles offshore from Cameron, La., the day before getting a permit to drill again. More Photos »

The usual deafening clatter of the driller shack and engine room on the Seahawk 2007 had been replaced by relative silence. After finishing a shift, the men typically went to their cabins instead of playing poker with their buddies, hitting the weight room or watching football in the television room. With no alcohol on board, many of the men had been eating more, Kenneth Milton, a rig cook, told a reporter visiting on Monday. “Everyone’s tensed up, nervous.”

Much of that tension will now ease. On Tuesday, regulators finally granted a drilling permit to Castex, which has a contract with the Seahawk 2007 to drill the well. Over the next few days, the structure will be towed from its current location near Cameron, La., to a drill site off the Texas coast.

“I’m glad they finally stopped dragging their feet,” said Gerald Wayne Blanchard, the top supervisor on the rig. “Now we can get back to work.”

But the long-term prospects for the workers on the Seahawk 2007 — and their employer, Seahawk Drilling — remain in doubt.

The workers still have jobs, but many of them are making significantly less than they did before the BP accident. Seahawk Drilling has suffered so much from the slowdown that it is considering selling some rigs — and maybe the whole company.

“If we get a good offer, we’re on the block,” said Randall D. Stilley, Seahawk’s president and chief executive.

That is part of the legacy of the BP disaster, which killed 11 people, spilled millions of barrels of oil, and shook up a regulatory regime that had for years granted drilling permits without much review.

Over the last few weeks, about a quarter of the gulf’s 46 shallow water oil rigs were idle, according to Jim Noe, executive director of the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition and senior vice president at Hercules Offshore. That compares with 5 to 10 percent in normal times, he said. After a flurry of permits were granted in late September and early October, he said, “we have seen another trickle.”

Although the ban on drilling in the gulf was officially lifted weeks ago, the top regulator for offshore drilling acknowledged Tuesday that permits have been slower in coming as the government stiffened safety requirements and intensified its reviews........read full article