OIL LEAK: President Obama pledges maximum efforts

HOMELAND SECURITY INVOLVED

President Barack Obama has said “every single available resource” of government will be deployed to help contain the Gulf Coast oil leak. Up to 5,000 barrels of oil a day may be now be leaking into the water after last week’s explosion on a BP-operated rig, which then sank.

Oil is expected to start washing ashore in the coming hours. The US government has designated the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as an “incident of national significance”.

This allows it to draw on resources from across the country to deal with the leak. A state of emergency has been declared in the state of Louisiana, whose coastline is the most threatened by the spill.

President Obama has dispatched high-level administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, to the area. He has also ordered environmental agency officials to inspect all offshore oil rigs and platforms to make sure they adhere to US safety codes.

Speaking at the White House, Mr Obama said: “While BP is ultimately responsible for funding the cost of response and clean-up operations, my administration will continue to use every single available resource at our disposal, including potentially the Department of Defence, to address the incident.

“And I have ordered the Secretaries of Interior and Homeland Security, as well as Lisa Jackson of the Environmental Protection Agency to visit the site on Friday to ensure that BP and the entire US government is doing everything possible, not just to respond to this incident, but also to determine its cause.”

The US Coast Guard said earlier that up to 5,000 barrels of oil a day – five times the previous estimate – might now be leaking into the water. BP’s chief operating officer of exploration and production, Doug Suttles, said the company was using remote operative vehicles (ROVs) to try to find out how much oil was leaking into the sea.