A wide swath of environmental groups is urging President Barack Obama to keep the pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill.

A letter Thursday to the president from over 50 groups urges Obama to "continue to demonstrate your leadership in support of strong clean energy and climate change legislation this year."

The letter notes that Obama yesterday said he wanted Congress to address the issue in 2010. The groups want Obama's support to continue. "Now, more than ever, we need your help to make that vision a reality," the groups write.

The giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is threatening to do significant environmental damage to coastal ecosystems. Its political impact could be just as severe, experts say.

“The longer this goes on and the more areas it affects, and it appears to be worsening, the more damage, physically and politically,” said Guy Caruso, a senior advisor on energy and national security issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The political damage may end up being even more far reaching.”

Caruso, a former top Energy Department official in the Bush administration, equated the spill to the oil slick that covered beaches in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1969. 

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that a massive oil spill threatening the Louisiana coast must play a role in considering President Barack Obama's offshore drilling plan.

Pelosi refused to endorse a ban on new exploration and drilling proposed by Florida Sen. Bill Nelson (D) Thursday in the wake of the spill, but she said that the disaster -- which officials believe killed 11 people -- needs to be taken into account when weighing Obama's plan to expand offshore oil and gas leasing.

"I would extend our concerns to those who lost their lives in the Gulf," she told reporters at her weekly press briefing. "We're going to take a look at the nature of the coastline and all of that has to be taken into consideration as we review the plan that the president put forth."

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Obama said he had directed his administration to use all available resources to help stop the Gulf Coast oil leak.

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Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) is still insisting a "comprehensive" EPA analysis of climate legislation is completed before he votes on the bill.

Last year, Voinovich and other Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee boycotted a panel vote on climate legislation introduced by Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) because they did not have an EPA cost analysis of the bill. Committee Democrats had argued that the bill was similiar enough to House-passed climate legislatoin that a separate EPA analysis was not necessary.

On news that the climate bill Kerry has crafted with Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was sent to EPA for review, Voinovich reiterated in letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that any analysis should incorporate changes to the bill from its introduction to the time when it gets voted on by the Senate.

The requirement could eventually delay a floor vote if the climate bill gets to that point, an big question now that Graham has pulled his support. EPA analyses can take weeks to complete.

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The Gulf of Mexico oil rig accident and spill have prompted the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) to postpone an awards ceremony scheduled for May 3 that honors oil company offshore safety achievements.

The semi-submersible drilling rig that exploded early last week was owned by Transocean Ltd and was under lease to BP. BP is a finalist for one of the awards, according to the MMS website.

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The spill has implications for climate change legislation and plans to expand offshore drilling.

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Over on our main site, my colleague Kevin Bogardus looks at a split between unions and environmentalists over the expansion of nuclear power.

* Much more oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico than previously believed

U.S. Coast Guard officials said the damaged BP well could be leaking as much as 5,000 barrels per day into the Gulf following last week’s explosion. The amount is five times larger than previous estimates.

“There’s an additional breach in the well,” Coast Guard spokesman Erik Swanson said in this Bloomberg account of efforts to contain the spill before it reaches fragile shorelines.

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