President Barack Obama said Tuesday he wanted to know "whose ass to kick" over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, set to devastate the coast's fragile economy and environment for years.| Talk is cheap ... |
But the president insisted that on his first visit a month ago, he warned "about what a potential crisis this could be."
"I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answer so I know whose ass to kick," Obama told NBC television's "Today" show as he bared a spot of raw emotion over the disaster.
"What is clear is that the economic impact of this disaster is going to be substantial, and it is going to be ongoing," Obama said Monday after meeting with top officials in the latest attempt to show his administration is on top of the crisis.
Environment woes: His assessment was echoed by his point man on the spill, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who said that while cleanup would take months, it would take years to restore environments and habitats.
Meanwhile, more and more sea birds have turned up at rescue centers coated in oily goop as the slick breaks into thousands of ribbons threatening shores from Louisiana to Florida.
Allen said BP had succeeded in capturing 11,000 barrels (462,000 gallons) of oil from the containment cap, a mile (1,600 meters) below the surface in a 24-hour period that ended early Monday, and planned to soon boost production to 20,000 barrels.
A top company official said BP has collected a total of 28,000 barrels of oil from the ruptured well. "This is an encouraging step," BP senior vice president Kent Wells told a press briefing.
But Allen said it remained unclear just how much oil was escaping from the ruptured wellhead, and what proportion of the escaping crude was being captured since the blast that ripped through the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform.
Government models estimate the oil's flow rate at between 12,000 and 25,000 barrels a day, meaning that only a portion of the crude is likely being captured so far.
Political fallout: A new poll showed that the spill could be turning into a major political liability for the president, with more Americans taking a negative view of the US response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill than to US relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
A month and a half after the BP spill began, the poll by ABC news and the Washington Post found that 69 percent of respondents gave a negative rating to the federal government response, compared to 62 percent who negatively rated the government's handling of Katrina two weeks after that devastating August 2005 hurricane.