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Obama to Deliver Critical Oval Office Speech on Gulf Oil Spill

   VOA News 15 June 2010
   President  Barack  Obama  and  Florida  Gov.  Charlie Crist walk along
   Casino  Beach  on Pensacola Beach, Florida, 15 Jun 2010, as he visited
   the Gulf Coast region affected by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Photo: AP

   President  Barack  Obama  and  Florida  Gov.  Charlie Crist walk along
   Casino  Beach  on Pensacola Beach, Florida, 15 Jun 2010, as he visited
   the Gulf Coast region affected by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill

   U.S.  President  Barack  Obama  is continuing a tour of the Gulf Coast
   region  Tuesday,  before  delivering a nationally televised address on
   the  government's  plans to deal with a massive oil spill there.  The
   speech will be his first from the Oval Office.
   The  president  will  deliver  the  address  hours after he returns to
   Washington  from  Florida, where beaches are beginning to see signs of
   oil  that  continues to gush from a ruptured deepwater well for a 57th
   day. Â
   A  White  House  spokesman  says  Mr.  Obama  also  will  discuss  the
   administration's  plans  to  speed up the handling of oil spill damage
   claims to those affected by the crisis.

   Meanwhile,  executives  from  the  BP  oil company will appear Tuesday
   before  a  congressional  panel,  where  they will begin three days of
   questioning about their operation of the damaged oil well.

    [Kurt Davies of the Greenpeace talks about what he would like to hear
                                            the president in his address:
                                                                        ]

   Two U.S. lawmakers set to question BP chief Tony Hayward say they have
   "serious questions" about documents that indicate BP took risks to cut
   costs in digging the well.
   The  panel  also  will  question  CEOs  of  several  other  major  oil
   companies,  including  Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron, about the safety
   of offshore oil drilling.
   On  Wednesday, the president is expected to meet with BP executives to
   press them to create a special fund to pay compensation claims.  Some
   lawmakers are calling for an amount as high as $20 billion.
   The  White  House spokesman says Mr. Obama is prepared to compel BP to
   hand  over  the  claims  processing  to  an  independent entity if the
   company does not speed up compensation.
   Mr.  Obama spent Monday inspecting damage done to the coastal areas of
   the  Gulf  states  of  Mississippi  and  Alabama,  where  he  promised
   residents their lives will return to normal, although the cleanup will
   not happen quickly.
   Critics  have  accused  the administration of being slow to respond to
   the disaster, which began April 20 when an oil rig exploded and killed
   11  workers.  The well is now spewing tens of thousands of barrels of
   oil each day into the Gulf.

   Â

   Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.

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