Obama launches inquiry into oil spill
Source: Agencies |
May 23, 2010, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
UNITED States President Barack Obama said yesterday that future offshore drilling would require assurances that another massive oil spill would not happen again, as energy giant BP Plc scrambled to contain a seabed well leak billowing crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
Obama unveiled a commission to investigate the accident and vowed to keep pressure on firms involved in the still-uncapped spill - BP, Halliburton and Transocean Ltd - and added he would hold Washington accountable for mending its ways.
"The purpose of this commission is to consider both the root causes of the disaster and offer options on what safety and environmental precautions we need to take to prevent a similar disaster from happening again," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.
With frustration growing and political risks looming over the spill, Obama appointed former Democratic Senator Bob Graham and former Environmental Protection Agency chief William Reilly to co-chair the bipartisan panel and said he wanted its conclusions in six months.
The spill has raised major questions about Obama's earlier proposal to expand offshore drilling as part of a strategy to win Republican support for climate change legislation.
A month after the well blowout and rig explosion that killed 11 workers, sheets of rust-colored heavy oil are starting to clog fragile marshlands on the fringes of the Mississippi Delta, damaging fishing grounds and wildlife.
"To me from the very beginning with BP it was nothing but public relations," said Roger Halphen, a south Louisiana school teacher who has worked both in the oil industry and as a commercial fisherman.
"It's just a disaster. Everybody was sleeping on this and now all of a sudden here it is," he said of oil washing up on the coast.
BP's battered reputation has been reflected in its share price which lost more than 4 percent in London on Friday, extending recent sharp losses.
US politicians and scientists have accused BP of trying to conceal what many believe is already the worst US oil spill, eclipsing the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska. It represents a potential environmental and economic catastrophe for the US Gulf coast.
London-based BP, facing growing US government and public frustration and allegations of a cover-up, said its engineers were working with federal scientists to determine the size of the leak, even as they fought to control the gushing crude with uncertain solutions.
Obama unveiled a commission to investigate the accident and vowed to keep pressure on firms involved in the still-uncapped spill - BP, Halliburton and Transocean Ltd - and added he would hold Washington accountable for mending its ways.
"The purpose of this commission is to consider both the root causes of the disaster and offer options on what safety and environmental precautions we need to take to prevent a similar disaster from happening again," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.
With frustration growing and political risks looming over the spill, Obama appointed former Democratic Senator Bob Graham and former Environmental Protection Agency chief William Reilly to co-chair the bipartisan panel and said he wanted its conclusions in six months.
The spill has raised major questions about Obama's earlier proposal to expand offshore drilling as part of a strategy to win Republican support for climate change legislation.
A month after the well blowout and rig explosion that killed 11 workers, sheets of rust-colored heavy oil are starting to clog fragile marshlands on the fringes of the Mississippi Delta, damaging fishing grounds and wildlife.
"To me from the very beginning with BP it was nothing but public relations," said Roger Halphen, a south Louisiana school teacher who has worked both in the oil industry and as a commercial fisherman.
"It's just a disaster. Everybody was sleeping on this and now all of a sudden here it is," he said of oil washing up on the coast.
BP's battered reputation has been reflected in its share price which lost more than 4 percent in London on Friday, extending recent sharp losses.
US politicians and scientists have accused BP of trying to conceal what many believe is already the worst US oil spill, eclipsing the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska. It represents a potential environmental and economic catastrophe for the US Gulf coast.
London-based BP, facing growing US government and public frustration and allegations of a cover-up, said its engineers were working with federal scientists to determine the size of the leak, even as they fought to control the gushing crude with uncertain solutions.
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