It's about time, really. Again, it's great that the Obama administration is starting to talk tough, but it's been a month. The time wasted accepting BP's word and the additional environmental destruction is hard to fathom. On issue after issue, Obama concedes much too much ground to companies like this and somehow believes that they will act in the best interest of anyone besides themselves. Didn't the Wall Street bailout teach them anything? How about the health care story when Big Pharma promised to help? This team needs to wake up and quit being so gullible. Even now, how much faith should anyone have in this team for the next crisis? How long can they keep riding with training wheels?
The crisis management of this administration remains pathetic and is more of the same as opposed to change. How many more times will the Obama administration have complete faith in these businesses to do what's in the best interest of the US as opposed to their bloated salaries and bonus schemes? How naive is this team?
BP, whose shares have dropped from £6.50 to £5.17 since the disaster began, is now blocking the EPA from publishing the reasons it has given for refusing to stop using Corexit, citing commercial confidentiality. The agency is therefore "evaluating all legal options".
Company executives may soon have to worry about the prospect of criminal charges. The White House says Justice Department officials are also in the region following President Obama's announcement on Saturday of a formal inquiry, which he said could lead to possible prosecutions.
Critics have repeatedly accused BP of trying to keep the public in the dark about the full scale of the disaster, and the steps it took to minimise risk. When the spill first occurred, on 20 April, the firm said only 1,000 barrels a day of oil were leaking into the Gulf. However, it was later forced to revise that figure upwards to 5,000.
The firm was also reluctant to allow the public to see underwater videos of the gushing well. When it eventually relented to political pressure to stream live footage on its website, its server crashed, prompting a Democratic member of the House of Representatives to comment that BP had "lost all credibility".
