Washington, May 23: US President Barack Obama has blamed the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on “a breakdown of responsibility,” tasking an official commission to investigate the disaster.
Speaking on his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, President Obama said, “First and foremost, what led to this disaster was a breakdown of responsibility on the part of BP and perhaps others, including Transocean and Halliburton.”
In an effort to prevent future oil spills, the US president went on to appoint former US Senator Bob Graham and former Environmental Protection Agency chief William Reilly as co-chairmen of a probe panel, tasking them with reporting on the accident within 6 months.
The US president also adopted a tough stance regarding future offshore drilling in his address, saying any such activities could only go forward if there were enough assurances that such accidents were not to happen again.
President Obama asserted that the spill has caused major economic problems for Americans across the Gulf Coast and has had disastrous environmental effects.
Scientists reported earlier that the oil spill is gradually finding its way toward Europe and the Arctic, endangering wider ecological basins.
According to a Sunday report by Reuters, scientists believe an estimated 70,000 barrels of oil per day would leak to the sea, a much higher figure than what BP experts had reported before.
——–Agencies