Obama: Stop finger-pointing over oil leak

(CNN) — President Obama on Friday criticized executives from BP and two other companies for blaming each other for the continuing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

“I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter,” the president said after meeting with Cabinet members to discuss the situation. “You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else. The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn’t.”

“I understand that there are legal and financial issues involved, and a full investigation will tell us exactly what happened. But it is pretty clear that the system failed, and it failed badly. And for that, there’s enough responsibility to go around. And all parties should be willing to accept it,” he said.

“It is absolutely essential that going forward, we put in place every necessary safeguard and protection so that a tragedy like this oil spill does not happen again.

“This is a responsibility that all of us share,” he said. “The oil companies share it. The manufacturers of this equipment share it. The agencies in the federal government in charge of oversight share that responsibility. I will not tolerate more finger-pointing or irresponsibility.”

BP will try again within the next day to cap a well that has gushed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the energy company said Friday.

An effort last weekend to plug the leak with a four-story containment dome failed when natural gas crystals collected inside the structure, plugging an outlet at the top.

The latest attempt will involve a tube designed to be inserted into a ruptured pipe, collect oil and send it to a vessel on the surface, said Mark Proegler, a BP spokesman.

The insertion tube is on the sea floor, and engineers plan to move it into place Friday, Proegler said. The company also has lowered a smaller containment dome for use if the insertion tube does not stem the flow of oil, he said.

Neither procedure is a permanent solution, said Adm. Thad Allen, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. He said Friday in Mississippi that the procedures “will reduce the leakage, not stop the leakage.”

The ultimate solution, he said, will be relief wells that are being drilled near the leak site. Those will take weeks, if not months, to complete, BP has said.

BP’s efforts to plug the leak come amid growing concern that the company has been low-balling how much oil has poured out of the well: A researcher says up to 70,000 barrels of oil could be leaking per day, and BP stands by a 5,000-barrel figure.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, sent BP a letter Friday asking for more details from federal agencies about the methods they are using to analyze the oil leak.

Markey, who chairs a congressional subcommittee on energy and the environment, said he will launch the formal inquiry after learning of independent estimates that are significantly higher than the amount BP officials have provided.

“The public needs to know the answers to very basic questions: How much oil is leaking into the Gulf and how much oil can be expected to end up on our shores and our ocean environment?” Markey said in a letter to BP. “I am concerned that an underestimation of the flow may be impeding the ability to solve the leak and handle management of the disaster.”

BP has said that since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drill rig that about 5,000 barrels — or 210,000 gallons — have been pouring out of the well. The company says it reached that number using data, satellite images and consultation with the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“I think that’s a good range,” Doug Suttles, BP’s CEO for exploration and production, said Friday.

But a researcher at Purdue University said BP’s estimate is too low. Associate Professor Steve Wereley says about 70,000 barrels of oil are leaking each day, based on an analysis of video of the spill.

Wereley said he spent two hours Thursday analyzing the video using a technique called particle image velocimetry. He said there is a 20 percent margin of error, which means between 56,000 and 84,000 barrels could be leaking daily.

“You can’t say with precision, but you can see there’s definitely more coming out of that pipe than people thought,” he said. It’s definitely not 5,000 barrels a day.”

A BP executive rejected that assertion Friday.

“Well that’s not what our experts, multiple experts, not only from BP, and the industry say,” said Bob Dudley, BP managing director for the Americas and Asia. “This crude is what’s called a light-sweet crude. It has lots of gas and when it comes out, it expands very rapidly, a little bit like bubbles in a soda pop. So it’s very difficult to look at it and say that the volume will be much higher. We certainly don’t see that at the surface.”

The dispute over the size of the oil leak caps a week in which congressional committees grilled executives from BP and two other companies: drilling contractor Transocean Ltd., which owned the rig, and oilfield services contractor Halliburton, which was responsible for cementing the well shut once drilled.

The companies blamed each other.

BP pointed to Transocean, which said BP was responsible for the wellhead’s design and Halliburton was responsible for the cement finishing work. Halliburton, in turn, said that its workers were just following BP’s orders, but that Transocean was responsible for maintaining the rig’s blowout preventer.

Obama took exception Friday.

“I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter,” the president said. “You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else. The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn’t.”

Obama said the federal government also was taking responsibility for its role.

“For too long, for a decade or more, there’s been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill,” Obama said. “It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies.

“That cannot and will not happen anymore. To borrow an old phrase, we will trust, but we will verify.”

As a result, Obama said, the Mineral Management Service will be restructured, with the part of the agency that permits oil and gas drilling and collects royalties separated from the part of the agency in charge of inspecting the safety of oil rigs and platforms and enforcing the law.

“That way, there’s no conflict of interest, real or perceived,” Obama said.

In addition, Obama said, the administration has ordered immediate inspections of all deepwater operations in the Gulf of Mexico, and no drilling permits will be issued until a 30-day safety-and-environmental review is completed.

Obama also announced a new examination of the environmental procedures for oil and gas exploration and development.

BP, the Coast Guard, and state and local authorities have scrambled to keep the oil from reaching shore or the ecologically delicate coastal wetlands off Louisiana. They have burned off patches of the slick, deployed more than 280 miles of protective booms, skimmed as much as 4 million gallons of oily water off the surface of the Gulf and pumped more than 400,000 gallons of chemical dispersants onto the oil.

On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration closed off to fishing another part of the Gulf of Mexico over which the federal government has jurisdiction. NOAA has now closed 19,377 square miles (50,187 square kilometers), which is 8 percent of the Gulf area within 200 miles of the coast, legally called an exclusive economic zone.

The total closed area a week earlier had been 4.5 percent.

Investigators are still trying to determine what caused the April 20 explosion at the rig, which sank two days later. Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead.

CNN’s Ed Lavandera contributed to this report.

By the CNN Wire Staff