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Angry Salazar threatens to push BP aside in oil spill containment effort
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Sunday stepped up his criticism of BP over its failure to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and threatened to remove the company from its lead role in the containment effort.
“I am angry and I am frustrated that BP has been unable to stop this well from leaking and to stop the pollution from spreading. We are 33 days into this effort and deadline after deadline has been missed,” Salazar said at a press conference after meeting with BP officials in Houston.
BP is the party responsible for the spill, but Salazar did not rule out a federal takeover.
“With respect to the rest of the responses, including keeping the oil from coming near shore and onshore and dealing with those ecological values, BP, again, is the responsible party and is on the hook for doing everything that needs to happen,” Salazar said.
“If we find that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately and we'll move forward to make sure that everything is being done to protect the people of the Gulf Coast, the ecological values of the Gulf Coast, and the values of the American people,” Salazar added.
Salazar said that BP is “throwing everything they can” at the problem.
“Do I have confidence that they know exactly what they're doing? No, not completely,” Salazar said, adding that’s why the Energy Department, NASA and other officials are involved in the effort to contain the pollution and block the gushing well 5,000 feet under the ocean surface.
The White House is continuing to dispatch high-level officials to the region. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is returning to the Gulf Coast Sunday. Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano are leading a group of senators on a Monday visit to Louisiana.
Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen – who is leading the federal spill response – acknowledged earlier Sunday that while the U.S. is overseeing the effort to get control of the gushing well, it is ultimately BP that must end the spill.
“What makes this an unprecedented anomalous event is access to the discharge site is controlled by the technology that was used for the drilling, which is owned by the private sector,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“They have the eyes and ears that are down there. They are necessarily the modality by which this is going to get solved. Our responsibility is to conduct proper oversight to make sure they do that. And with the top kill that will be coming up later on this week, that's exactly what is happening,” Allen said.
The “top kill” refers to a maneuver that BP will attempt in coming days to block the oil flow by pumping heavy, dense muds into the damaged well structure.
