Sens. Kerry and Lieberman and environmental groups scrambled to cast the speech in a positive light.

Passing an energy bill will be President Obama's top legislative priority this summer, according to spokesman Bill Burton.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday night praised President Barack Obama’s Oval Office push for action on energy legislation.

President Barack Obama will meet with BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg at the White House Wednesday

The meeting to discuss the oil spill and claims payments is putting the spotlight on the board chairman who has had a much lower profile than other BP officials — until now.

“Carl-Henric Svanberg, the low-key chairman of BP PLC, steps into the spotlight Wednesday when he confers with U.S. President Barack Obama about the massive offshore oil spill,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The White House session will intensify attention on Mr. Svanberg and his oversight of the company's managers during the worst crisis in the oil giant's 102-year history. Chief Executive Tony Hayward and two colleagues will join the Obama meeting, which likely will focus on such touchy issues as creation of a fund to pay victims' claims and suspension of BP's dividend,” their story adds.

Sam Youngman and I have a story on our main page about President Barack Obama's big Oval Office speech on the BP oil spill and energy legislation.

A former Justice Department official who helped probe the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s will oversee administration efforts to bolster oversight of offshore oil-and-gas drilling, the White House announced Tuesday.

President Barack Obama has tapped Michael R. Bromwich to reform the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS), which the administration is carving up into three separate agencies in a move to end what officials call conflicting missions within the department.

“Bromwich will develop the plans for a new oversight structure, replacing long-standing, inadequate practices with a gold-standard approach for environmental and safety regulation. He has a mandate to implement far-reaching change and will have the resources to accomplish that change,” the White House said.

The Senate’s top Republican is warning President Barack Obama not to cast the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a reason to enact climate change legislation.

Obama is slated to discuss the federal response to the spill and energy policy in a highly anticipated speech from the Oval Office Tuesday night.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted Tuesday afternoon that Obama will “seize on — in his Oval Office address to the nation tonight — to make an argument for a national energy tax, which is euphemistically referred to around this town as cap and trade.”

Three Gulf region research institutions will receive $25 million in grants from BP to study the environmental and public health effects of the oil spill. 

BP announced the first round of funding Tuesday after pledging $500 million three weeks ago to the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.

The institutions will begin work on three initial studies to "help establish critical baseline data" for subsequent research on the April 20 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Of the first $25 million, $5 million goes to Louisiana State University, half of the total $10 million they will receive during the next 10 years for the project.

The remaining $20 million will be divided up between two other institutions, with $10 million headed to the Florida Institute of Oceanography, hosted by the University of South Florida, and the final $10 million going to the Northern Gulf Institute, a consortium led by Mississippi State University. 

My colleague Sam Youngman reports that a White House spokesman dismissed questions about BP’s ability to pay vast economic damages related to the Gulf oil spill, saying the company has "plenty of cash."