Gulf oil spill: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ‘angry, frustrated’ at BP efforts

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‘I am angry and I am frustrated that BP has been unable to stop this well from leaking,’ Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Sunday after a visit to the Houston command center where scientists for the oil company and the government have been working to plug the blown-out well that has produced a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

‘Deadline after deadline has been missed,’ he added. Salazar clarified later that BP has been giving the government schedules, but failing to meet those goals. The Interior secretary noted that he had promised ‘to keep our boot on the neck’ of BP, and would continue to do so.

‘I have no question that BP is throwing everything they have to solve the problem,’ he said. ‘Do I have confidence that they know everything they are doing? No, not completely,’ Salazar said.

Appearing with Salazar, Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, an agency under Salazar’s purview, cautioned that ‘expectations were raised’ about stopping the leak that were ‘probably not feasible to meet from the onset.’

McNutt said BP officials and government regulators ‘are all on the same page’ in efforts to control the spill.

‘We want to stop polluting the ocean, and we want to kill this well,’ McNutt said.

-- Geoff Mohan