WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Friday angrily decried the “ridiculous spectacle” of oil industry officials pointing fingers of blame for the catastrophic spill in the Gulf of Mexico and said the accident could bring devastation to the region and its economy.
The president also pledged to end a “cozy relationship” between the oil industry and federal regulators that he said had existed for years and into his own administration.
As Obama spoke in the White House Rose Garden, undersea robots in the Gulf tried to thread a small tube into the jagged pipe that is spewing oil into the water. The blown-out well has pumped out more than 4 million gallons (15 million liters) of crude.
BP engineers were trying to move the 6-inch (15-centimeter) tube into the leaking 21-inch (53-centimeter) pipe, known as a riser. The smaller tube was to be surrounded by a stopper to keep oil from leaking into the sea. BP said it hoped to know later Friday if the tube succeeded in taking the oil to a tanker at the surface.
Obama said he shared the “anger and frustration” felt by many Americans, and he acknowledged differing estimates over how much oil was leaking.
WATCH COVERAGE OF OBAMA’S PRESS CONFERENCE ON THE OIL SPILL:
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“We know there’s a level of uncertainty,” Obama said. He said the administration’s response has “always been geared toward the possibility of a catastrophic event.”
The Gulf spill is not only a potential environmental and economic catastrophe. It also is a major political challenge for Obama to demonstrate that his administration is doing everything it can to deal with the disaster. An AP-GfK poll this week found that the spill has not stained Obama nor dimmed the public’s desire for offshore energy drilling. Although some conservative pundits have called this “Obama’s Katrina,” that is not how the public feels. Katrina was a hurricane that hurt former President George W. Bush’s standing with many Americans.
Obama slammed BP and other companies responsible for the spill for pointing fingers at each other instead of accepting responsibility for the environmental and economic catastrophe in the Gulf.
But he said responsibility rests with the federal government, too, saying oil drilling permits had been granted without appropriate environmental reviews.
“That cannot and will not happen anymore,” Obama said. He announced a new examination of environmental reviews that happen before oil and gas development goes forward.
With millions of gallons (liters) of oil fouling the fragile Gulf ecosystem after a drilling rig exploded April 20 and later sank, Obama said: “It’s pretty clear that the system failed and it failed badly.”
There’s “enough blame to go around and all parties should be willing to accept it,” the president said.
He said he would not be satisfied until the leak was stopped, the spill was cleaned up and all claims were paid.
Obama accused BP and others involved in operating the rig and drilling the well of putting on a “ridiculous spectacle” of fingerpointing during congressional hearings this week.
Not long before the spill the president had announced plans for a limited expansion of offshore oil drilling. After the catastrophe, the president said those plans would be put on hold pending a 30-day review by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar of safety procedures on oil rigs and at wells.
On Friday the president announced there would be more stringent environmental reviews, too.
The Interior Department said those will focus on whether the Minerals Management Service is following all environmental laws before issuing permits for offshore oil and gas development.
“It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies,” Obama said.
The new standard: “Trust but verify.”
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