After travelling to the Louisiana coast, U.S. President Barack Obama said a growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may spur an "unprecedented environmental disaster," which BP America will foot the bill for.
Obama flew to New Orleans on Sunday. His motorcade then drove 120 kilometres southeast to Venice, where workers struggling to contain the spill have created a staging area.
After being briefed by Coast Guard officials, he said that his administration was doing everything in its power to minimize the disaster and that BP America would bear the costs of the clean-up.
"Your government will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to stop this crisis," he said at a rain-soaked press conference. "BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill."
The first priority is to stop the broken oil well, more than a kilometre underwater, from leaking into the Gulf, Obama said. The operation will then shift to protecting local estuaries.
"We're going to do everything in our power to protect our natural resources, compensate those who have been harmed, rebuild what has been damaged and help this region persevere like it has done so many times before."
High winds and choppy seas have prevented crews from capping the flow of oil from the ruptured well and from skimming, burning or dispersing oil already on the water's surface.
"Through yesterday, winds made it impossible for the big skimmer vessels to get out on the water," CTV's Tom Walters told CTV News Channel Sunday in a telephone interview from Louisiana. "They were all tied up or at anchor in the relatively calmer waters of the Mississippi River."
The potentially devastating leak began on April 20 with an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon exploration rig that killed 11 workers.
The U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday that it is nearly impossible to estimate how much oil has spilled into the water since then, but put the figure at perhaps six million litres. However, other experts have estimated that as much as 34 million litres had been spilled by Wednesday.
A satellite image analysis by the University of Miami found the oil slick's size had tripled over the last two days, which could indicate the oil is gushing from the well faster than it had in the days after the blast.
At the Coast Guard's more conservative rate, it could still only be a matter of weeks before the spill passes the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident as the worst U.S. oil disaster in the country's history.
The oil threatens beaches, marshes and wildlife, as well as fertile fishing grounds that represent the livelihoods of many in the region.
Walters said the spill could be worse for fishermen than Hurricane Katrina because it was clear what was needed to combat the devastation: rebuilding infrastructure.
"But trying to rebuild an eco-system, nobody knows how long that tunnel is, nobody knows how long it takes to do that," Walter said. "And so the great fear here is that this disaster, which continues to move in slow motion for the people here, that this disaster may have consequences that go on for months, for years, possibly for decades, and nobody can really predict that."
If the oil is not contained it could be picked up by the Gulf Stream and carried into the Florida Keys and up the East Coast, experts predicted.
Duke University biologist Larry Crowder told the Associated Press that the scope of the disaster could affect some of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard if that happens.
The gulf's waters circulate between Mexico and Cuba, before going along Florida's west coast and moving up the East Coast into the North Atlantic.
Meanwhile, as the spill grows in size, questions about its cause have yet to be answered. Critics say both the oil company, BP PLC, and the U.S. government should have done more to prevent the explosion and subsequent leak. Locals are also upset about what they perceive to be the government's slow reaction to the disaster.
In response, White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs posted a blog entry entitled "The Response to the Oil Spill," in which he outlined the administration's day-by-day response to the explosion.
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the government has an "all hands on deck" approach to the spill, which includes co-ordinating federal, state and local resources to aid BP's response.
In the aftermath of the blast, Obama also announced he was halting any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster.
With files from The Associated Press
