British energy giant BP PLC says it has so far spent about 1.43 billion dollars containing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the worst environmental disaster in American history, as the company continues to deal with the nightmare in markets and public relations.
A containment cap on the damaged oil well is collecting almost 15,000 barrels, or 630,000 gallons, of oil a day, up sharply from previous amounts.
In the past five days, the company has kept about 57,000 barrels from leaking into the Gulf.
U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is leading the government relief effort, said BP is anticipating moving another ship into the Gulf to help move the collected oil. BP next week is expected to boost its collecting capacity to 28,000 barrels a day.
BP is also trying to drill two relief wells that should be ready by August to completely plug the leak.
Allen said he had ordered a special task group to work up new estimates on how much oil is still gushing out.
Experts have estimated the leak spews 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, with one estimate as high as 25,000. Criticism A commentary on the New York Times on Thursday said the moment has arrived
for Tony Hayward to call an end to his career as chief executive of BP.
"The British oil firm's chief does not have the credibility with shareholders, regulators or consumers to continue in his role once the Gulf
of Mexico crisis is over," the commentary said. "Mr. Hayward has made too many slips since the accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20. He was unwise to boast of the superlative scale of BP's response as if to suggest the company was well prepared for the disaster."
Meanwhile, the White House is facing public discontent as many Americans are unhappy with President Barack Obama's handling of the spill. Gulf coast residents have complained that the federal government has been slow to act and too dependent on BP for solutions.
Obama said in an interview earlier this week that he would fire Hayward if he worked for him.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama is offering condolences to the relatives of the 11 workers who were killed in the April 20 explosion that triggered the spill. Obama wrote the families and invited them to visit the White House on Thursday.
Sean Snaith, an economist at University of Central Florida, calculated that coastal Florida could lose up to 195,000 jobs and nearly 11 billion U.S. dollars in economic activity from the impact of the oil spill.
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told a Senate hearing he would ask BP to repay the salaries of the workers laid off because of the six-month
moratorium on deepwater exploratory drilling imposed after the spill.
Scientists said the oil -- brick red in places, chocolate brown in others --could spread as the hurricane season begins. The crude could travel wherever a storm surge takes it -- even to New Orleans, for example.
One-third of the Gulf's federal waters are closed to fishing and the toll of dead and injured birds and animals is climbing.