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Gulf leak eclipses Exxon Valdez as worst US spill

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-05-28 10:24

An aerial view of crew cleaning the marshes near Block 69 in NE Pass which is swamped with oil from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana May 27, 2010. [Agencies]

In another troubling discovery, marine scientists said they have spotted a huge new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf, stretching 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay in Alabama. They fear it could have resulted from using chemicals a mile below the surface to break up the oil.

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In Washington, Elizabeth Birnbaum stepped down as director of the Minerals Management Service, a job she had held since July. Her agency has been harshly criticized over lax oversight of drilling and cozy ties with industry.

An internal Interior Department report released earlier this week found that between 2000 and 2008, agency staff members accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography.

Polls show the public is souring on the administration's handling of the catastrophe, and Obama sought to assure Americans that the government is in control and deflect criticism that his administration has left BP in charge.

Oil mixed with dispersant rests on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico Venice 13 miles south of Venice, Louisiana on May 27, 2010. [Agencies]

"My job right now is just to make sure everybody in the Gulf understands: This is what I wake up to in the morning, and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about. The spill," he said.

Obama said he would end the "scandalously close relationship" between regulators and the oil companies they oversee. He also extended a freeze on new deepwater oil drilling and canceled or delayed proposed lease sales in the waters off Alaska and Virginia and along the Gulf Coast.

Fishermen, hotel and restaurant owners, politicians and residents along the 100-mile (160-kilometer) stretch of Gulf coast affected by the spill are fed up with BP's failures to stop the spill. Thick oil is coating birds and delicate wetlands in Louisiana.

"I have anxiety attacks," said Sarah Rigaud, owner of Sarah's Restaurant in Grand Isle, Louisiana, where the beach was closed because blobs of oil that looked like melted chocolate had washed up on shore. "Every day I pray that something happens, that it will be stopped and everybody can get back to normal."

Charlotte Randolph, president of Louisiana's Lafourche Parish, one of the coastal parishes affected by the spill, said: "I mean, it's wearing on everybody in this coastal region. You see it in people's eyes. You see it. We need to stop the flow."

"Tourism is dead. Fishing is dead. We're dying a slow death," she added.

The Coast Guard approved portions of Louisiana's $350 million plan to ring its coastline with a wall of sand meant to keep out the oil.