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VIA CNN:
BP’s chief executive officer said Monday that the company is doing all it can to respond to the runaway oil leak that has been befouling the Gulf of Mexico for more than a month.
“We are going to clear every drop of oil off the shore,” Tony Hayward told reporters at Fourchon Beach, Louisiana, where cleanup efforts were under way. “We will remediate any environmental damage and we will put the Gulf Coast right and back to normality as fast as we can.”
BP will not be replaced by the federal government in the ongoing cleanup efforts of the spill, said Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration’s point man for the spill.
“To push BP out of the way would raise the question: to replace them with what?” he said at the White House. BP is “exhausting every technical means possible” to deal with the spill, he said on Monday.
The company’s next effort to plug the leak is to come at dawn Wednesday. BP plans to pump thick, viscous fluid twice the density of water into the site of the leak to stop the flow so the well can then be sealed with cement — the “top kill” procedure.
Hayward, noting that the attempt will be carried out on the seafloor a mile below the sea surface, estimated the odds of success for the method at 60 percent to 70 percent.
Asked about the company’s continued use of an oil dispersant in the face of an EPA request that it use a less toxic alternative, Hayward said, “Everything that we do with dispersants is with the explicit approval of the EPA.”
Hayward acknowledged that BP’s reputation has taken a beating, but said the company is being straightforward about its efforts. “We’re trying to communicate openly and transparently about everything that we’ve done,” he said.
