Obama Outraged Over BP, Federal Oil Regulators, Axelrod Says

[babylonsister]

Obama Outraged Over BP, Federal Oil Regulators, Axelrod Says

Wednesday, May 26, 2010


May 26 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama's outrage over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has reached "the upper scale," and it is directed at both BP Plc and federal regulators, senior White House adviser David Axelrod said today.

"His anger and frustration about those things, and his anger and frustration about any attempt to obfuscate the amount of damage that's been done by the company is great," Axelrod said in an interview on the eve of the release of a report on the spill from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

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Axelrod said the president's outrage was "pretty great" when he learned of some of the "shortcomings" at the Minerals Management Service and its "coziness" with an industry it's supposed to regulate.

The president's top political adviser declined to quote Obama's words, saying: "Knowing that Bloomberg is a family news service, I can't share with you what he said."

Axelrod accused the MMS of "appalling" conduct and said the agency itself "needs a top kill of its own."

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As for BP, Axelrod said, the company hasn't been "particularly candid" about the amount of oil that was leaking, and that proved "problematical."

He said Obama intends to hold BP "fully accountable for this, and fully accountable for the damage that they have done, fully accountable for their role in the accident."

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/05/26/bloomberg1376-L31TPD07SXKX-6.DTL