TIMES ONLINE: President Obama launched a ferocious attack on BP and the oil industry yesterday as what is now officially the worst spill in US history threatened to derail his presidency.
Seizing the initiative on the first day of potentially good news from the Gulf of Mexico, Mr Obama cancelled or suspended dozens of offshore drilling projects and condemned a “scandalously close relationship” between oil companies and government regulators.
He said: “As far as I’m concerned, BP is responsible for this horrific disaster, and we will hold them fully accountable on behalf of the United States as well as the people and communities victimised by this tragedy. We will demand that they pay every dime they owe for the damage they’ve done and the painful losses that they’ve caused.”
While Coast Guard officials in the Gulf said that BP’s so-called top kill strategy to fill the gushing well with mud seemed to be working, the President warned that there was no guarantee of success yet.
In his first White House press conference in ten months, he said that he would leave it to others to judge whether this was “his Katrina” — a reference to the hurricane that destroyed President Bush’s reputation for competence — but said he was “confident that people will look back and say this Administration was on top of what was an unprecedented crisis”. >>> Giles Whittell, Washington | Friday, May 28, 2010
