US President Barack Obama on Friday stepped up the battle against a massive oil slick lapping the Gulf of Mexico coast, vowing never to abandon those imperiled by the worst US oil spill.
As BP pleaded for patience to allow time for its risky, complex “top kill” to work and plug the massive leak, Obama pledged “to continue to do whatever it takes to help Americans whose livelihoods have been upended by the spill.”
The US president, clad in hiking boots and with his sleeves rolled up, ordered the number of workers feverishly trying to contain and clean up the spill along the southern US coastline to be tripled.
He toured an oil-slicked Louisiana beach, picking up tar balls to examine them, as he outlined his administration’s “historic response” to the disaster that has spewed millions of liters of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
His second trip to the region since an April 20 explosion tore through the Deepwater Horizon rig, 80km off shore, came as experts and residents hold their breath, hoping BP can stop the oil flowing from a fractured pipe.
Government scientists estimate 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of crude a day have been gushing into the Gulf since the rig sank two days after the blast, which killed 11 workers.
“I think the key element here is to exercise patience,” BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles said, adding that the operation would last another 24 to 48 hours.
The British energy giant is using robotic submarines to pump heavy drilling fluids down the wellhead, hoping to drown the leak long enough to allow engineers to then seal it with cement.
“We’ll have periods where we’re pumping. We’ll have periods where we’re monitoring results of that pumping. We’ll have periods where we actually pump in this, what we call junk,” Suttles said, seeking to allay concerns over why BP had stopped the pumping several times since it began on Wednesday.
The disaster has already closed stretches of coastal fishing waters, endangering livelihoods that are also dependent on tourism, and is threatening a catastrophe for Louisiana marshes, home to many rare species.
“To the people of the Gulf Coast, I know you’ve weathered your fair share of trials and tragedy,” Obama said, in a reference to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina, which triggered a botched response by the administration of former US president George W. Bush.
“I’m here to tell you that you’re not alone. You will not be abandoned. You will not be left behind,” Obama said. “We are on your side and we will see this through.”
He said 20,000 people had already been deployed to contain and clean up the spill, but that he had ordered US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and US Coast Guard chief Admiral Thad Allen to “triple the manpower in places where oil has hit the shore or is within 24 hours of impact.”
Allen, who has been charged with overseeing the government’s response, said initial signs suggested BP’s “top kill” was succeeding.
“They have been able to push the hydrocarbons down with the mud. The real challenge is to put enough into the well to keep the pressure where they can put a cement plug over the top,” he said on ABC’s Good Morning America.
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