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White House under Commission criticism over BP oil spill
A Commission investigation into the White House’s response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has come under strong criticism. A draft report said that the Obama administration blocked government scientists’ efforts to inform the public of worst case scenarios.
The report, published by the National Oil Spill Commission cited that the White House was directly involved in controlling information on the spill.
The disaster began after an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on 20 April.
The report says that during the first 10 days of the oil spill, the government’s response was slow and “seemed to lag”, adding that coast guard officials were “overly-optimistic” in believing BP could deal with the incident.
The report also points out that Obama’s advisor on energy policy, Carol Browner, stated wrongly on national television that three-quarters of the oil had “gone”, while the White House blocked a request by officials to publicly announce the scale of the leak.
Officials were considered to be too optimistic about handling the disaster. Such news comes as an embarrassment to the White House after the commission was appointed by Obama himself.
The White House had said in a statement that the worst case scenario could be more than 4.2 million gallons per day. On the other hand, BP’s drilling permit for the well said that 6.8 million gallons could pour from the well.
The National Oil Spill Commission report says those numbers, which were used as the basis for the administration's spill response, were never made public, though they appeared on an internal Coast Guard situation report.
