US President Barack Obama was scheduled to make his debut Oval Office address to the US people on Tuesday, as he seeks to wrest political control over the Gulf of Mexico oil catastrophe.
Corporate oil chiefs, including the head of the US division of BP, which has been cast by many in Washington as the villain of the disaster, will meanwhile face a roasting by angry lawmakers in Congress.
Obama will fly back to Washington from Florida after a two-day, three-state tour of the disaster zone, and will seek to show mastery over the situation.
PHOTO: REUTERS
He will speak from the Oval Office at 8pm in a setting reserved for the most somber and important moments of US national life.
“Now, I can’t promise folks here in Theodore or across the Gulf Coast that the oil will be cleaned up overnight. It will not be. It’s going to take time for things to return to normal,” Obama said in Alabama on Monday. “But I promise you this, that things are going to return to normal.”
He also named five of the US’ top scientists, environmentalists and conservation experts to his independent commission set up to probe the causes of the Gulf oil spill.
The five will join the bipartisan body set up last month. The seven-member body is chaired by two-term Florida governor and former senator Bob Graham, a Democrat, and former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency William Reilly, a Republican.
Its main task is to provide recommendations on how the oil industry can prevent — and mitigate the impact of — any future spills that result from offshore drilling.
“These individuals bring tremendous expertise and experience to the critical work of this commission,” Obama said. “I am grateful they have agreed to serve as we work to determine the causes of this catastrophe and implement the safety and environmental protections we need to prevent a similar disaster from happening again.”
Among those tapped to join the commission are Cherry Murray, who was appointed the dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and professor of engineering and applied sciences in July last year.
Named in 2002 by Discover Magazine as one of the “50 Most Important Women in Science,” the White House said Murray’s expertise was in materials physics, including the study of soft condensed matter and complex fluids.
She will join two other women, Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Frances Ulmer, is chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage. Beinecke, a specialist in coastal resources and expert in clean energy, has spent much of her 35-year career fighting to protect marine ecosystems from oil slicks, while, Ulmer is a former mayor of Juneau and a member of the committee set up to examine claims after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
Rounding out the commission are Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and Terry Garcia, executive vice president at the National Geographic Society.
Boesch is a biological oceanographer, while Garcia is a former deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. From 1994 to 1996, he also led the implementation of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Restoration Plan for the Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska.
Senior officials from Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and BP’s US president and chairman Lamar McKay were scheduled to testify yesterday before the a hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Environment.
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