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Friday, May 28, 2010 – Daily News – 7A Obama: Fixing oil spill my responsibility WASHINGTON (AP) — Thrown on the defen- sive, President Barack Obama acknowledged that his administration could have done better in dealing with the biggest oil spill in the nation’s history and misjudged the industry’s ability to cope with a worst-case scenario. Obama will make his sec- ond tour of the battered Gulf Coast on Friday. ‘‘I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down,’’ Obama declared in a lengthy news conference at the White House on Thursday. As he spoke, well owner BP struggled anew to plug the blown well that exploded five weeks ago, killing 11 workers and sending mil- lions of gallons of pollut- ing oil gushing out. Obama’s words marked a clear shift of emphasis for an administration that previously had said it was generally ‘‘in charge’’ but there were limits to what it could do — and that oil giant BP was responsible for stopping the flow and cleaning up the disastrous damage. ‘‘Those who think we were either slow on the response or lacked urgency, don’t know the facts,’’ said Obama at a White House news confer- ence at which he also announced new restric- tions on offshore drilling. Separately, Elizabeth Birnbaum, the head of the Minerals Management Service that oversees off- shore drilling, resigned under pressure. Obama’s move to take responsibility and accept accountability was a ges- ture few politicians are eager to make. But with each passing day, frustra- tion with Obama’s admin- istration has grown, and his poll numbers on the matter are dropping. The news conference and his trip to the coast on Friday represent a more aggres- sive public effort by the president. Asked about compar- isons to the Bush adminis- tration’s much-criticized handling of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, he said that was for others to judge but he insisted his administration has been active from the start. ‘‘This has been our highest priority’’ since the rig exploded, he said, making the point repeated- ly. New estimates Thurs- day showed the spill has already surpassed the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska as the nation’s worst. The president announced new steps to restrict drilling, including continuing a moratorium on drilling permits for six months, suspending planned exploratory drilling off the coasts of Alaska and Virginia and ordering a halt to 33 exploratory deep-water rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama’s news confer- ence was his third this year, but just his first scheduled question-and- answer session at the White House since a prime-time East Room session in July of last year. Even Democrats described Obama as defensive in his meeting with reporters. ‘‘The president and White House are arguably facing their first crisis without a partisan foe, and that makes for difficult press conferences and unforgiving politics,’’ Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis said. Obama spoke at times in personal terms. ‘‘My job right now is just to make sure every- body in the Gulf under- stands: This is what I wake up to in the morning, and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about. The spill.’’ Obama marked out half a dozen areas where he and his administration could have done better. They included: not moving sooner to finish reforming what he called ‘‘cozy and sometimes cor- rupt’’ relations between the oil industry and gov- ernment regulators; not recognizing that those flaws continued before approving an expansion of offshore drilling, and not obtaining more quickly an accurate estimate on the amount of oil gushing from the leak. He also said he regret- ted not pushing BP sooner to release underwater video footage of the leak and not realizing that oil companies did not have ‘‘their act together when it came to worst case scenar- ios.’’ Though he said the government was giving the orders in the aftermath, he acknowledged that BP hasn’t always done what officials have asked, for instance ignoring direc- tions to fully explore less- toxic alternatives to the chemical dispersant being used now on the oil. ‘‘If the question is, are we doing everything per- fectly out there, then the answer is absolutely not. We can always do better,’’ he said. ‘‘If you’re living on the coasts and you see this sludge coming at you, you are going to be contin- ually upset and from your perspective, the response is going to be continually inadequate until it actually stops. And that’s entirely appropriate and under- standable.’’ Asked about inevitable PAID POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT FOR JUDGE OF THE SUPERIOR COURT OFFICE TWO, 2010 William Murphy 30 years experience as an attorney. 23 years as a public servant. Experienced. Independent & Fair. Paid for by the committee to elect William Murphy Experience and Temperament Count WilliamMurphy4Judge.com PAY No more checks to write, stamps to buy, trips to the Daily News office to pay your paper bill, or big payments in advance to get a lower rate Now you can …. SAVE over 17% compared to the regular subscription price! with a painless charge every 13 weeks to your Visa or Mastercard. 13 weeks Home Delivery – only $ Other time increments available also at discounted rates. 530 527-2151 Or use our new online Subscription Concierge service: www.redbluffdailynews.com Click on Subscription Services, upper right on the home page. 24! For more information or to convert or extend your subscription, call comparisons between his handling of the disaster with his predecessor’s handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Obama said: ‘‘I’ll leave it to you guys to make those com- parisons ... because what I’m spending my time thinking about is how do we solve the problem?’’ ‘‘I’m confident that people are going to look back and say that this administration was on top of what was an unprece- dented crisis,’’ he added. Meanwhile, U.S. Geo- logical Survey Director Marcia McNutt said two different teams of scien- tists calculated the spill has grown to nearly 18 million to 39 million gal- lons over the past five weeks. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska in 1989, nearly 11 million gallons were spilled. As an example of the government’s hands-on approach, Obama said that BP had wanted to drill a single ‘‘relief’’ well in an effort to eventually stop the leak in several months if all else failed. Instead, the administration insisted on two relief wells, Obama said. Over and over, the pres- ident sought to counter criticism that the adminis- tration was giving too much leeway to BP PLC. ‘‘Make no mistake, BP is operating at our direc- tion,’’ he said. ‘‘We will demand that they pay every dime they owe for the damage they’ve done and the painful losses that they’ve cost,’’ he said. Still, he acknowledged, ‘‘We’ve got to get it right.’’ The continuing leak, damaging coastal areas and threatening much greater harm, has been sobering for lawmakers. Rep. John Dingell, D- Mich., noted he has sup- ported offshore gas and oil drilling but said, ‘‘Today I am forced to come to a dif- ficult conclusion.’’ ‘‘We need to establish a complete moratorium on all leasing and drilling activity until it is estab- lished that all of it was done and is being done’’ in compliance with environ- mental laws, he said. Obama said a too-com- fortable relationship between industry and gov- ernment didn’t change when he came into office. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ‘‘came in and started cleaning house. But the culture had not fully changed at MMS. And surely I take responsi- bility for that.’’ He spoke shortly after the resignation of Birn- baum, the director of the Minerals Management Service, was announced. ‘‘I found out about her resignation today. I don’t know the circumstances under which this occurred,’’ Obama said. A senior administration official said that Salazar informed the president Wednesday night that he had decided to replace Birnbaum after Obama told the interior secretary to make sure that every per- son under him was capable of doing the job. However, Obama was not aware of how the replacement was carried out Thursday morn- ing, said the official, speak- ing on condition of anonymity to describe pri- vate conversations. Obama’s suspension of consideration of any appli- cations for drilling oil in the Arctic until 2011 was a blow to Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which had plans for such drilling this summer. ‘‘We respect and under- stand today’s decision in the context of the tragic spill in the Gulf of Mexi- co, but we remain confi- dent in our drilling exper- tise, which is built upon a foundation of redundant safety systems and compa- ny global standards,’’ said Shell Alaska Vice Presi- dent Pete Slaiby. home-delivered subscription to Convert your Daily News