Obama to make fourth trip to oil disaster zone

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama heads to the Gulf of Mexico next week for a fourth visit as Washington prepared for a series of hearings Wednesday on the widening scope of the oil disaster.

The devastating oil spill remains high on the president's agenda, as political fallout grows over the worst man-made environmental disaster in US history, with a third of the Gulf's waters still closed to fishing and a growing number of dead birds and other marine animals.

A slew of scientists involved in government studies that confirmed for the first time evidence of oil stretching far and wide below the surface were due before several congressional panels. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was also scheduled to testify at a Senate hearing on safety issues related to offshore oil exploration, a day after his agency announced bolstered safety requirements for shallow-water drilling in depths of up to 500 feet (150 meters).

On Tuesday, US forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed they had found evidence of an undersea oil plume at a size of 3,300 feet more than 40 miles from the well drilled by BP, the first such government confirmation.

BP and NOAA had previously said oil plumes, which deplete the oxygen in the water and thus threaten marine life, had not been discovered near the ruptured well that lies a miles (1,600 meters) below the surface.

On Monday and Tuesday next week, Obama will visit Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, all of which have coastlines, fishing industries and tourist beaches damaged or threatened by the massive oil slick spawned by the April 20 explosion on a BP-operated rig. Amid growing public frustration seven weeks into the disaster, Obama lashed out at media "talking heads" who have criticized his response and said if it was up to him, he would fire BP CEO Tony Hayward over several flippant public comments.

Hayward, whose sardonic English tones and comments, including a prediction that the Gulf spill would be "very, very modest," have irked some Americans, found himself directly in the cross-hairs. "He wouldn't be working for me after making any of those statements," Obama said on NBC television's "Today" show. Hayward has since apologized for his remarks.

Obama revealed he had not spoken to Hayward since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, saying there would be little point. "When you talk to a guy like a BP CEO, he's going to say all the right things to me. I'm not interested in words. I'm interested in actions," Obama said. Hayward can expect another tough ride next week, as a key House of Representatives panel said he would testify on the disaster on June 17.

Obama, who made the latest of his three trips to the disaster zone last week, insisted he had no time for playing politics -- though his comments seem to be taking on an increasingly political cast. He told NBC he was looking for some "ass to kick" as recriminations mount and oil reaps a dreadful toll on seabirds, Louisiana wetlands, teeming fishing grounds and idyllic beaches.

He rejected claims he had been too cool, or slow in his response. "I'm going to push back hard on this because I think that this is an idea that got into folks' heads and the media is running with it. "I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf," he said.

The undersea effort to capture spewing oil is accelerating. Coastguard Admiral Thad Allen, who is heading the government response, said BP engineers had captured 14,842 barrels of oil over the last 24 hours from a containment cap placed over the blown out well, a significant increase from Monday's tally. It remains unclear how much oil is spewing out of the busted wellhead, and officials have warned they will not be able to siphon off all of the excess crude until relief wells are completed in mid-August.

"We've gone from about 6,000 barrels up to almost 15,000," Allen noted. Underwater video footage of the wellhead, and the containment cap installed by BP last week still appeared to show substantial oil escaping into the sea from the ruptured well, but Allen downplayed estimates the leak could be gushing as much as 60,000 barrels a day.

Commentators have drawn parallels between Obama's handling of the slick, and his predecessor George W. Bush's botched management of Hurricane Katrina that devastated the same coastline in 2005. Political warning signs over the disaster are proliferating. A recent CBS News poll showed only thirty-eight percent of Americans approve of the way the administration is dealing with the spill.

A Washington Post/ABC survey revealed more Americans disapprove of Obama's response to the oil spill than disapprove of Bush's Katrina performance.