WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama said his administration will stop at nothing to repel the torrents of crude that’s “assaulting our shores and our citizens,” describing the ever-worsening ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico as an epidemic “we will be fighting for months and even years.”
Obama’s 18-minute speech was replete with wartime language as he described the government’s “battle” against the “siege” in the Gulf of Mexico _ a blown-out oil well several kilometres below the sea that’s been gushing torrents of crude for almost two months and has defied all efforts to plug it.
“Stopping it has tested the limits of human technology,” Obama, criticized for his sluggish response to the worst environmental disaster in American history, said during the first Oval Office address of his presidency.
“But make no mistake: we will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes.”
He even sounded one note of optimism: oil giant BP should be able to capture 90 per cent of the crude by mid-July.
Beyond that, however, the president had harsh words for BP on the eve of his sit-down at the White House with company executives, accusing the company of “recklessness” and reiterating to Americans that the company would be required to pick up the full tab for the devastation.
“BP will pay for the impact this spill has had on the region,” said Obama.
The president’s address was aimed at proving to skeptical Americans that he’s on top of the calamity that’s befallen the gulf region. He pledged he would establish a national commission to determine what went wrong in the gulf, to put better off-shore drilling regulations in place and to implement a Gulf Coast restoration plan.
“I make that commitment tonight,” Obama said.
And he urged Americans to get on board with his vision for a clean energy agenda, saying the U.S. has known for decades that the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were unsustainable and yet progressive energy policy has been blocked time and again by Congress.
“We cannot consign our children to this future,” he said. “The time to embrace a clean energy future is now.”
Obama’s address took place as a new poll conducted by The Associated Press suggested the majority of Americans disapproved of his handling of the disaster, though many more pointed the finger at BP for its lacklustre response.
The president faced the cameras following his return from the Gulf region, where he spent two days assuring residents that the government is doing all it can and that life will return to normal.
Earlier Tuesday, a government panel of scientists said the oil spill was leaking between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons a day, an increase over previous estimates that put the maximum size of the spill at 2.2 million gallons per day.
Obama walked the sandy white beaches of the Florida panhandle on Tuesday morning, where tar balls are beginning to wash ashore.
“Pensacola’s still open for business,” Obama said after meeting with local officials who told him that tourists are staying away even from areas that have suffered little effect so far from the spill.
One longtime political observer expressed sympathy for Obama’s plight, given how reliant the U.S. remains on oil and the country’s long-standing opposition to the heavy hand of government regulation.
Some of the same people urging Obama to do something “are the same people who have ‘I hate Obama’ bumper stickers on their cars as they fill up their tanks yet again,” Stephen Hess, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think-tank, said Tuesday.
“Americans want their presidents to take charge except when they’re telling him to mind his own business. It’s a ‘change things but stay out of my way’ kind of mentality.”
Hess added the oil industry, in fact, has to remain responsible for containing the gusher and cleaning it up.
“What the president should say is: ‘Hey, the federal government hasn’t got the technology to cap oil wells or clean oceans; that’s the responsibility of BP and the rest of the oil industry. Unfortunately, we need them. We will hold them responsible, but we also have to work with them,'” Hess said.
“It’s a question of what the government can really do anyway. The government didn’t create this, and it isn’t Katrina. All they could have done was made an attempt to regulate the industry better, but that’s something that wasn’t appealing to Congress.”
And yet the topic of regulation and how to avert future catastrophes was on the front burner in heated congressional hearings on Tuesday.
Congressional representatives chided the country’s largest oil companies, saying they’d be no better prepared to handle such a disaster as BP has proven to be.
Henry Waxman, the Democratic congressman from California who’s long been an advocate of clean energy, said the strategies of corporations to deal with deep-sea gushers amounted to nothing more than “paper exercises” that weren’t any better than BP’s unsuccessful emergency plans.
Executives from ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell — and BPAmerica — sat side by side at the witness table as lawmakers expressed dismay that no one seems to know how to stop the gusher.
All of the companies are considered leaders in deep-sea drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Some executives made attempts to distance themselves from BP.
Rex Tillerson, the CEP of ExxonMobil, told the committee that the Gulf spill would not have occurred if BP had properly designed its deepwater well.
“We do not proceed with operations if we cannot do so safely,” said Tillerson.
