British energy giant BP hopes to significantly increase the amount of oil it is capturing from its well in the Gulf of Mexico, it emerged today.
BP said it could increase its capacity to capture oil from around 15,000 barrels a day now to 40,000-53,000 barrels by the end of this month and 60,000-80,000 by mid-July. But it could still not guarantee collecting all the gushing crude.
The Obama administration had set a 48-hour deadline on Saturday for the company to come up with new oil collection plan after US scientists said far more crude was pumping out from BP's ruptured deep sea oil well than previously thought.
The spill may be contained but cannot be stopped at least until August, when relief wells are due to be completed.
In a pivotal week in the 56-day-old spill, Barack Obama began a two-day visit to the Gulf coast. He will address the nation tomorrow and will meet BP executives on Wednesday for what a White House spokesman said would be a "very frank" encounter.
Mr Obama has seen the massive spill hijack his ambitious political agenda, pushing job creation and Wall Street reform to the backburner. Both are key issues in November congressional elections in which Mr Obama's fellow Democrats are expected to face a tough fight to hold on to their majorities.
Facing intense criticism that he has not shown enough leadership in the spill, Mr Obama will seek to use his meeting with BP executives and his first nationally televised Oval office speech to show that he is on top of the crisis.
For its part, BP hopes to stop the slide in the company's share price, which has sunk under a barrage of criticism from the Obama administration over its handling of the cleanup of the spill and threats that it may face greater liabilities.
The company has lost over 40 per cent of its market value since the crisis began. BP's US-listed shares fell 7.7 per cent in midday trading in New York.
Millions of gallons of oil have gushed into the Gulf since an April 20th explosion on an offshore rig killed 11 workers and ruptured a deep-sea well. The spill has soiled 190 km of US coastline and imperiled a multibillion dollar fishing industry.
BP placed a containment cap on its blown-out seabed well this month after a series of failures to stem the flow, but oil continues to gush. It said its containment cap captured 15,200 barrels of crude yesterday, bringing the total since it was installed June 3rd to 134,500 barrels.
Mr Obama will press BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg at their first meeting on Wednesday to set up an independently managed fund to pay damage claims by individuals and businesses hurt by the oil spill disaster.
White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters aboard Air Force One the administration was confident BP would agree to set up the fund. He would not put a monetary value on the account, but said it would be in the billions of dollars.
Gulf Coast residents have been complaining for weeks that the BP claims process was too slow and that the money the company was paying out was too little to make ends meet.
US Senate Democrats have written to BP urging it to make a $20 billion initial deposit to such a fund as a good-faith showing that they will not shirk their responsibility.
Some dealers said the establishment of such a fund could help draw a line under the crisis but others fear it could equate to giving the US administration a blank cheque. US politicians have also been calling on BP to scrap its quarterly dividend to ensure it has enough money on hand to pay compensation claims and clean up the spill.
BP executives will likely face renewed pressure over the issue when they testify at this week's congressional committee hearings.
Representatives of BP, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips are due to testify on Capitol Hill tomorrow, while BP chief executive Tony Hayward will make his first appearance at a congressional hearing on Thursday.
Tomorrow's hearing may provide the best view yet of how the industry believes the spill will affect it in the long term.
The spill has created an unprecedented financial, legal, regulatory and environmental crisis for companies that operate in the Gulf of Mexico, Moody's Investors Service warned today, saying it could be up to two years before oil production reached pre-spill levels.
At his hearing on Thursday, Mr Hayward is expected to face harsh questioning. He is the public face of BP's response to the spill and a lightning rod for criticism that the company played down the scale of the disaster to reduce its potential liabilities.
With the crisis nearing the two-month mark, Mr Obama made his fourth trip to the Gulf today, visiting Alabama, Mississippi and Florida for the first time.
He will stay overnight in the region today, return to Washington tomorrow and make a nationally televised address tomorrow night from the Oval office, a setting meant to underscore the gravity of the crisis, media commentators said.