President Barack Obama returns to the Gulf of Mexico coast today, insisting he's in charge of efforts to shut down what is now estimated as the worst oil spill in US history.
Mr Obama seized ownership of what he called a "tremendous catastrophe," after weeks of allowing Cabinet members take the public lead as the crippled BP PLC well spewed millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf from nearly a mile (1,500 meters) below the surface.
"I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down," Mr Obama declared at a White House news conference dominated by the spill on Thursday.
Even at the lowest estimate – 18 million gallons (68 million litres) – the Gulf spill has far surpassed the size of the previous largest US oil spill, the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, in which a tanker ran aground in Alaska, spilling nearly 11 million gallons (42 million litres).
The oil has been spewing since the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers.
The president was under mounting criticism – even from members of his own Democratic Party – for seeming aloof to what could be the biggest environmental tragedy in US history.
Asked about inevitable comparisons between his administration's handling of the disaster with his predecessor's response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which flooded New Orleans and other areas, Mr Obama said: "I'll leave it to you guys to make those comparisons... what I'm thinking about is how do you solve the problem?"
Comparisons to former President George W Bush's inadequate response to the Katrina have come mainly from opposition Republicans who are trying to made political gains in November congressional elections.
"I'm confident people are going to look back and say this administration was on top of what was an unprecedented crisis," he said. "We've got to get it right."
Mr Obama is struggling for high ground in the political wars raging in the months before the congressional elections, where his Democratic majorities in both House and Senate are in danger.
He appeared testy at times, reflecting, perhaps, the strain of coping with the Gulf spill as he oversees wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tries to prevent an escalation of the crisis on the Korean peninsula and struggles with an economy and unemployment only slowly rebounding from the deepest recession in decades.
He has passed through bruising legislative sessions and took a notable battering from Republicans as he pushed through health care overhaul. Now he's struggling to keep congressional Democrats focused on financial regulatory reform while trying to smooth the Senate confirmation of his second Supreme Court nominee.
The president, who campaigned on a promise to change the way Washington does business, blasted a "scandalously close relationship" he said has persisted between the major oil companies and government regulators.
Conceding that "people are going to be frustrated" until the well is capped, Mr Obama said he would use the full force of the federal government to extract damages from BP.
"We will demand they pay every dime they owe for the damage they've done and the painful losses they've caused," Mr Obama said.
He spoke shortly after the head of the troubled agency that oversees offshore drilling resigned under pressure. The departure of Minerals Elizabeth Birnbaum, the Management Service Director, was announced just before Mr Obama's news conference began.
While making clear he was leading the response, Mr Obama acknowledged some things could have been handled better.
He said his administration didn't act with "sufficient urgency" prior to the spill to clean up the Minerals Management Service, accused of corruption and poor regulation of drilling rigs and wells.
While Mr Obama defended calling for an expansion of offshore drilling prior to the spill, he said he "was wrong" to believe that oil companies were prepared to respond to worst-case oil spills.
Mr Obama also said the administration took too long to make its own measurements of the size of the spill, and didn't push BP hard enough early on to release underwater footage
For everyone, the stakes grew even higher Thursday as government scientists said the oil has been flowing at a rate two to five times higher than what BP and the US Coast Guard initially estimated.
Two teams of scientists calculated the well has been spewing between 504,000 gallons (1.9 million litres) and more than 1 million gallons (3.8 million litres) a day. Even using the most conservative estimate, that means about 18 million gallons (68 million litres) have spilt so far. In the worst-case scenario, 39 million gallons (148 million litres) have leaked.
In another troubling discovery, marine scientists said they have spotted a huge new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf, stretching 22 miles (35km) from the leaking well head northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama. They fear it could have resulted from using chemicals a mile below the surface to break up the oil.
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