Reactions to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill from various officials and interested parties ranged from blame and outrage at the damage caused by the spill, to calls for greater accountability on the part of the U.S. government and BP, including new legislation dealing with preventative security and clean-up improvements.
US government
On 30 April 2010, President Barack Obama ordered the federal government to delay issuing new offshore drilling leases until a thorough review determined whether more safety systems were needed and authorized teams to investigate 29 oil rigs in the Gulf in an effort to determine the cause of the disaster. That same day he announced that he had dispatched the Secretaries of the Department of Interior and Homeland Security, as well as the EPA Administrator and NOAA to the Gulf Coast to assess the disaster.
On 11 May Department of the Interior released a press release, announcing that the inspection of deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico found no major violations."MMS inspection report of deepwater rigs in Gulf of Mexico". (DOI Press release) Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center; U.S. Department of the Interior. 2010-05-11. Retrieved 2010-07-04. On 30 May, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar issued a moratorium on all deepwater offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf for a period of six months (see 2010 U.S. Deepwater Drilling Moratorium). Soon after, Hornbeck Offshore Services, a company with financial interests in deepwater drilling, filed suit (Hornbeck Offshore Services LLC v. Salazar) in U.S. District Court seeking an injunction to bar enforcement. Judge Martin Feldman of the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana issued a decision for Hornbeck on 22 June 2010, granting a preliminary injunction, barring enforcement of the order.Kunzelman, Michael(AP) (22 June 2010). "Judge blocks Gulf offshore drilling moratorium". Yahoo!.com News. The White House has indicated that they will immediately appeal the injunction. Salazar has indicated that the Department of the Interior will also "issue a new order in the coming days that eliminates any doubt that a moratorium is needed, appropriate, and within our authorities."Rickard, Mary and Jeremy Pelofsky "Obama administration to issue new drilling moratorium". Reuters 22 June 2010.
On 9 June the FAA issued a NOTAM (Notice to airmen) no-fly zone over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the affected area, effective until further notice. According to the New York Times, the Department of Homeland Security is denying media access to the area.
The Obama administration sent a $69 million bill to BP for the U.S. government's clean up effort. The bill was also sent to Transocean, Anadarko, Moex Offshore and QBE Underwriting.
The Obama administration has been noted for its unusually aggressive and often excessive rhetoric in criticizing BP, which some investors saw as an attempt to deflect criticism of his own handling of the crisis. A White House spokesman said the President's job was to keep his "boot on the throat" of the company, a similar phrase used by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar back on 2 May. Republicans such as Rand Paul and Joe Barton have accused President Obama of being anti-business and "un-American", with Paul stating that said he had "heard nothing from BP indicating it wouldn't pay for the spill". British pension fund managers (who have large holdings of BP shares and rely upon its dividends) accepted that while BP had pay compensation for the oil spill and the environmental damage, they argued that the cost to the company's market value from the President Obama's criticism was far outweighing the direct clean-up costs. The Department of State stated that the issue will not affect US-UK relationships, calling the UK its "closest ally".
On 15 June President Obama made his first speech from the Oval Office, addressing the BP oil spill crisis, saying, "This oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced... Make no mistake: we will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever's necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy." The President was later reported to have said that "his frustration over the mammoth oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not an attack on Britain" and that he had "no interest in undermining BP's value", as the two leaders tried to soothe trans-Atlantic tensions over the disaster.
On 4 July 2010, the federal government announced that it will be taking control of the Deepwater Horizon Response website from joint BP/government agency control and would take charge of information posted. BP did not comment on the change.Weber, Harry R.(AP) (4 July 2010). "US to take more control of spill response website". Business News. The Houston Chronicle. The new site, RestoreTheGulf.gov, was activated on 7 July and will gradually incorporate content previously on deepwaterhorizonresponse.com, to be phased out over several weeks.
UK government UK Prime Minister David Cameron stated that "sensible dialog" was needed and BP would require certainty over its liability for compensation.
Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, was also reported to have made a similar comment, and similar concerns related to the tenor of media releases were also expressed by Labour MP and ex-Parliamentary Secretary Tom Watson, Vince Cable the Business Secretary, and the UK Foreign Office.
International governments Three days after the oil spill began, the Netherlands offered to donate the use of ships equipped to handle very large scale spills.
The Netherlands also offered to prepare a contingency plan to protect Louisiana marshlands with sand barriers and a Dutch research institute developed a strategy to begin building dikes within three weeks. According to Geert Visser, Dutch Consul-General, the U.S. government responded to the Dutch offer with "Thanks for your help, but at the moment we can manage ourselves", despite BP's desire to bring in the Dutch equipment. US regulations require that oil-contaminated water must be stored on board in US waters. The Dutch vessels continuously extract the majority of the oil, but the water that returns to the ocean does not comply with the U.S. standard. Dutch officials have criticized the requirement, as it requires many additional trips to on-shore storage facilities. Spill Response Group head Koops said, "you have to get as much oil as possible into the storage tanks and as little water as possible. So we pump the water, which contains drops of oil, back overboard". Allen explained on 11 June, "We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water – the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that". The US later relaxed its requirements and took the Dutch up on part of their offer, airlifting Dutch equipment to the Gulf and retrofitting it to U.S. vessels, where as of 10 June, it had not yet entered service. To avoid using Dutch ships and workers, the U.S. government asked them to train American workers to build the sand berms. According to Floris Van Hovell, a Dutch spokesman, Dutch dredging ships could complete the Louisiana berms twice as fast as the U.S. companies.
As of 6 May, the United Nations and 14 countries had offered assistance. The U.S. government declined the offers, with a State Department email to reporters stating "there is no need right now that the U.S. cannot meet." The countries offering help were Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. On 21 June, Iran's Revolutionary Guards offered assistance to contain the oil spill.
On 14 June Chris Huhne, the then UK Secretary of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, made a formal statement to the House of Commons, expressing sympathy to those affected, that the environmental consequences must take priority and that the UK Government would remain focused on practical measures to achieve this, including offering dispersants.Implications of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill for the UK (Oral Parliamentary Statement)
That same day, U.S. spokesman P.J. Crowley said the U.S. had received 21 aid offers from 17 countries and four international groups. "We are maintaining contact with these countries, we are grateful for the offers, and we will take them up on these offers." On 19 June, the Coast Guard actively requested skimming boats and equipment from the Netherlands, Norway, France, and Spain. By 25 June, the U.S. State Department listed 70 assistance offers from 23 countries, and indicated that 8 had been accepted. (Archive dated 18 June @ blogs.tampabay.com) On 29 June the State Department accepted 22 offers of assistance from 12 countries and international bodies, including two high speed skimmers and fire containment boom from Japan. (Clarification, 1 July).
A month after the French foreign minister volunteered a fleet of private oil-skimming boats, the owner met with BP and Coast Guard officials to present the idea. Weeks later, in late June 2010, a private contractor in Florida purchased 9 of them.
The U.S. Jones Act prohibits the use of foreign ships and foreign crews in port-to-port shipping and within the three-mile limit. Initially, foreign-flagged boats stayed outside the limit and did not transport oil, exempting them from the Act. Allen states, "While we have not seen any need to waive the Jones Act as part of this historic response, we continue to prepare for all possible scenarios....Should any waivers be needed, we are prepared to process them as quickly as possible to allow vital spill response activities being undertaken by foreign-flagged vessels to continue without delay." According to the spill response center, six vessels have now applied for waivers. As of late June, none had been granted.
Industry Jack Gerard, President of The American Petroleum Institute (API), stated that disasters are infrequent and that the Deepwater Horizon is an isolated incident. By touting the aggregate safety record of the industry API has refuted any claims of a loss of industry wide credibility. API has also stated that the offshore drilling industry is important to job creation and economic growth To help prevent a recurrence of the Deepwater Horizon spill, API is setting up its own offshore safety institute that will be separate from API's lobbying organization.
During congressional testimony, key API stakeholders such as Chevron's CEO John Watson, made an open admission to the industry's credibility gap stating "For our industry, this is a humbling experience. The American people expect that the energy we need will be produced safely and reliably. That did not happen here". Furthermore, ExxonMobil's CEO Rex Tillerson, testified that, "When these things happen, we are not well equipped to deal with them". Additionally, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell have made plans to fund a billion dollar joint venture to build a new rapid response capability for deep water offshore drilling response in the Gulf of Mexico. While all of the top five oil CEOs seem to be in unanimous agreement on the issue of expediting the permitting process, at least publicly. they all agreed that industry needs to work harder at improving safety so that events like Deepwater Horizon do not occur in the future and that a more robust capacity to deal with them when they do is established.
Insurance Times reported an open letter from the Chairman of RSA Insurance Group, "the head of one of the country's leading companies", to President Obama (text of letter) that expressed a concern over "double standards" compared to the 2008 financial crisis and over "prejudicial and personal" comments in the media.
BP public relations