Address To The Nation

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June 11, 2010

Obama to address nation on oil disaster Tuesday night

Posted: 09:23 AM ET

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CNN Wire Staff

President Obama addresses the nation live Tuesday night at 8 ET with the latest on the BP oil disaster. Stay with CNN for updates on the cleanup and effort to stop the leak.

President Obama will visit the Gulf states affected by the oil spill Monday and Tuesday and then address the nation on Tuesday night from the White House on the next steps in responding to the environmental catastrophe, his senior adviser said Sunday.

On his fourth visit to the Gulf region since the disaster began April 20, Obama will make stops in Theodore, Alabama; Gulfport, Mississippi; and Pensacola, Florida, according to senior administration officials.

After returning from the two-day trip, Obama will make a televised statement from the Oval Office on the night before he is scheduled to meet with top BP officials.


Washington (CNN) -- President Obama is visiting the Gulf states affected by the oil spill Monday and Tuesday and then address the nation Tuesday night from the White House on the next steps in responding to the environmental catastrophe, his senior adviser said.

On his fourth visit to the Gulf region since the disaster began April 20, Obama is making stops in Theodore, Alabama; Gulfport, Mississippi; and Pensacola, Florida, according to senior administration officials.

On his return to Washington, Obama will make a televised statement from the Oval Office on the night before he is scheduled to meet with top BP officials.

The president is expected to speak for about 15 minutes, beginning his remarks with the latest from "two days spent in the Gulf region and what we've done to respond to the worst environmental disaster in our nation's history."

He will talk about the leak containment strategy, a senior administration official said Monday, along with the reorganization of the Minerals Management Service in the Interior Department, and how much oil is flowing from the broken well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

He will also discuss BP's claims process, and what his administration is doing to make it fast, efficient and transparent and to ensure its independence from BP, the official said.

Obama will talk about the beginning of a process to restore the Gulf to a place better than it was before the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in April. He will also discuss what must be done to decrease dependence on oil and other fossil fuels.

In addition, the address will look ahead to the president's meeting with BP executives Wednesday, the White House said.

David Axelrod, the senior adviser to Obama, said the president would push BP to create a BP-funded escrow account that will pay for damage claims from the worsening oil spill. In addition, Axelrod said, the plan would call for an independent third party to handle the claims process.

"The president will use every legal device at his disposal to make sure that this money is escrowed and that there is an independent administrator so that claims are not slow-walked, people can get the relief they need in a timely fashion and that we don't create more victims from this terrible disaster," Axelrod said.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other Senate Democrats sent a letter to BP chief Tony Hayward on Monday urging the company to set aside $20 billion to cover economic damage and Gulf cleanup costs.

"While we are pleased that BP has admitted liability for these damages and vowed to provide full remuneration for economic losses and clean-up costs, history has taught us that corporations often fail to live up to their initial promises," the senators said in the letter.

As the president and Congress pushed to get BP to move faster in compensating people, the company was still struggling to pinpoint how much oil was gushing into the ocean.

BP began deploying pressure sensors on its ruptured undersea well Sunday in an effort to fine-tune estimates of the worst oil spill in U.S. history.


The Transocean Discoverer Enterprise, with flare, collects oil being pumped up from the ruptured BP well on Saturday.
Read more about the sensors

The company used remote-controlled submarines to begin positioning the sensors inside the well, 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf, company spokesman Mark Proegler said. The sensors were requested by federal experts who have been trying to gauge how much oil has been pouring from the well, which experts say could have been spewing as much as 1.7 million gallons a day into the Gulf.

But Proegler said the devices may not yield accurate information for several days.

"It's not as if they'll plug these sensors in and get readings right away," he said.

Researchers recently doubled estimates of how much oil has been flowing from the ruptured well, saying last week that up to 40,000 barrels -- or 1.7 million gallons -- a day may have leaked for weeks. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration's point man on the disaster, said the sensors will help give those researchers a better picture of the flow rate.

Because of this, Allen's deputy, Rear Adm. James Watson, gave BP until Sunday to provide alternative plans that adequately address substantially higher rates of oil flow. In response, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told Watson that the company had devised a strategy to contain up to 80,000 barrels of oil per day by mid-July, according to a letter obtained by CNN.

Read the letter from BP to Watson (PDF)

The revised plan -- which aims for a maximum containment of slightly more than 50,000 barrels per day by the end of June -- was submitted two weeks earlier than originally suggested by BP, according to an administration official.

The administration "has continuously demanded strategies and responses from BP that fit the realities of this catastrophic event, for which BP is responsible," the official said. "We will continue to hold BP accountable and bring every possible resource and innovation to bear."

Oil is believed to have been pouring into the Gulf since the April 20 explosion that sank the offshore drill rig Deepwater Horizon, killing 11 workers. The spill now dwarfs the 11 million gallons that were dumped into Alaska's Prince William Sound when the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989, and oil in varying amounts and consistencies has hit the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

CNN's Dan Lothian contributed to this report.