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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (76247)	5/27/2010 7:57:37 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Obama Outraged Over BP Spill & Federal Oil Regulators (Update1) By Edwin Chen and Julianna Goldman May 27 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s outrage over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has reached “the upper scale” and is directed at both BP Plc and federal regulators, senior White House adviser David Axelrod said. “His anger and frustration about those things, and his anger and frustration about any attempt to obfuscate the amount of damage that’s been done by the company is great,” Axelrod said in an interview yesterday on the eve of the release of a report on the spill by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Obama today will extend to six months a moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling, announce news standards to strengthen oversight of the industry and enhance safety, cancel a lease sale off the coast of Virginia and delay oil exploration off the coast of Alaska, a White House aide said. Obama is scheduled to make his announcement at the White House at 12:45 p.m. today The Gulf well, about 40 miles off Louisiana’s coast, began pouring crude after an explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. BP, based in London, leased the rig from Geneva-based Transocean Ltd., the largest deepwater driller. BP yesterday began its most ambitious attempt to plug the spill. Obama, in planned remarks today, will speak about the Salazar report and “lay out some new thoughts on how to proceed on drilling,” White House spokesman Bill Burton said. Tomorrow, the president will visit the gulf region for the second time since the oil rig caught fire. Salazar told members of the House Natural Resources Committee that his report will “address some of the measures that can be taken to increase safety.” Other Approaches BP is pumping mud-like drilling fluid into the well in an effort, dubbed “top kill,” to stop the flow, which has poured millions of gallons of oil into the gulf and soiled at least 70 miles (113 kilometers) of coastline. “If it’s successful -- and there are no guarantees -- it should greatly reduce or eliminate the flow of oil now streaming into the gulf from the seafloor,” Obama said yesterday during an appearance in Fremont, California. “And if it’s not, there are other approaches that may be viable.” Lack of Candor Axelrod said the president’s outrage was “pretty great” when he learned of some of the “shortcomings” at the Minerals Management Service and its “coziness” with an industry it’s supposed to regulate. The president’s chief political adviser declined to quote Obama’s words, saying: “Knowing that Bloomberg is a family news service, I can’t share with you what he said.” Axelrod accused the MMS of “appalling” conduct and said the agency itself “needs a top kill of its own.” Salazar said on May 19 he plans to replace the MMS with three agencies, separating energy development, enforcement and revenue collection. The reorganization will take 30 days to complete, he said. As for BP, Axelrod said, the company hasn’t been “particularly candid” about the amount of oil that was flowing, and that proved “problematical.” He said Obama intends to hold BP “fully accountable for this, and fully accountable for the damage that they have done, fully accountable for their role in the accident.” The spill has cost BP a total of $760 million, or about $22 million a day, the company said May 24. Average daily profit last year was $45 million a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. BP said in an e-mailed statement yesterday that it has paid more than $36 million in damage claims and will appoint an independent mediator to review and assist claims. Tom Kenworthy and Brad Johnson, both staff members of the Center for American Progress, a research organization close to the White House, urged Obama to put the federal government in charge of the disaster response. To contact the reporter on this story: Edwin Chen in Washington at EChen32@bloomberg.net; Julianna Goldman in Washington at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net; Last Updated: May 27, 2010 07:20 EDT