WASHINGTON (Reuters)—A New Orleans federal judge will oversee a swath of civil lawsuits brought by injured oil rig workers, commercial fishermen and others stemming from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, a 12-year veteran of the federal bench, will supervise hundreds of cases against BP P.L.C. and other defendants, a special judicial panel wrote in an order on Tuesday.

Many plaintiffs' lawyers welcomed the decision. They wanted the cases to be merged in New Orleans, where tourism has suffered and fishing bans have drydocked shrimping boats in the spill's aftermath.

"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 panel wrote in its order.

Judge Barbier will be in charge of issues that could decide the future of spill-related lawsuits, such as which laws should be applied. The cases are in their earliest stages.

BP had wanted the cases linked before a federal judge in Houston where it has its U.S. headquarters.

Securities lawsuits lobbed at BP by stockholders angered by its steep share declines will be combined in Houston, the panel decided. It chose Houston federal judge Keith Ellison to oversee those cases.

The seven-judge panel, known as the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, held a hearing in late July in Boise, Idaho, to figure out how to stitch together hundreds of spill-related lawsuits.

Many plaintiffs' lawyers argued that New Orleans was the best venue. Some predicted that the merged cases would be sent to Judge Barbier, who already had been assigned to at least 40 cases stemming from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

"I think he will be a great judge," said Thomas Sims of the law firm Baron & Budd, which had argued for Judge Barbier to oversee the consolidated cases.

He said Judge Barbier was someone "who knows how to work with plaintiffs and defendants to get the case moving forward with minimal court involvement."

He cited a recent hearing to force BP to preserve oil samples as evidence. Judge Barbier denied the motion, but got both sides to collaborate on a solution.

Judge Barbier said in June that he sold his holdings of bonds issued by companies involved in the spill to avoid any appearance of conflicts.

The judicial panel said an appeals court recently denied a petition by some defendants that Judge Barbier be recused from spill cases.

Judges in multidistrict lawsuits hold much power, presiding over how various pretrial processes such as discovery and depositions of witnesses are handled.

Eventually, Judge Barbier is supposed to return the cases to the districts in which they were filed for trials, but in practice judges in multidistrict lawsuits often help forge broad settlements, as happened in the Vioxx product liability cases against drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc.