BP, Obama ignoring cleanup help: report

BP and the Obama administration face mounting complaints they are ignoring foreign offers of equipment and making little use of the fishing boats and volunteers available to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The U.S. Coast Guard said there have been 107 offers of help from 44 nations, ranging from technical advice to skimmer boats and booms.

But many of those offers are weeks old, and only a small number have been accepted. The vast majority are still under review, according to a list kept by the State Department.

Inrecent days and weeks, for reasons BP has never explained, many fishing boats hired for the cleanup have done a lot of waiting around.

A report prepared by investigators with the House committee on oversight and government reform forRepresentative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, detailed one case in which the Dutch government offered April 30 to provide four oil skimmers that collectively could process more thansix million gallons of oily water a day. It took seven weeks for the U.S. to approve the offer.

But onThursday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs scorned the idea that "somehow it took the command 70 days to accept international help."

"That is a myth that has been debunked literally hundreds of times."

He noted 24 foreign vessels were operating in the Gulf before this week. He did not specifically address the Dutch vessels.

The help is needed. According to the high end of the federal government's estimates, millions of gallons of crude have spewed from the bottom of the sea since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform.

According to estimates, the disaster would eclipse the 140-million-gallon Ixtoc disaster in the Gulf three decades ago and would rank as the biggest offshore oil spill during peacetime.

The biggest spill in history happened in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War, when Iraqi forces opened valves at a terminal and dumped about 336 million gallons of oil.

More than 2,000 boats have signed up for oil-spill duty under BP's Vessel of Opportunity program. The company pays boat captains and their crews a flat fee based on the size of the vessel, ranging from the equivalent of $1,275 Cdn to $3,200 Cdn a day, plus a fee for each crew member who works an eight-hour day.

Rocky Ditcharo, a shrimp dock owner in Buras, La., said many fishermen hired by BP have told him they often park their boats on the shore while they wait for word on where to go.

"They just wait because there's no direction," Ditcharo said.

He said he believes BP has hired many boat captains "to show numbers."

Ditcharo also said he suspects the company is hiring out-of-work fishermen to placate them with paycheques.

Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana's hard-hit Plaquemines Parish, said BP and the coast guard provided a map of the exact locations of 140 skimmers that were supposedly cleaning up the oil.

But he said after he repeatedly asked to be flown over the area so he could see them at work, officials told him only 31 skimmers were on the job.

"I'm trying to work with these guys," he said. "But everything they're giving me is a wish list, not what's actually out there."

A BP spokesman declined to comment.

Newly retiredU.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the government's point man for the response effort, bristled at some of the accusations in Issa's report.

"I think we've been pretty transparent throughout this," Allen said at the White House.

He disputed any suggestion there aren't enough skimmers being put on the water, saying the spill area is so big there are bound to be areas with no vessels.

The coast guard said there are roughly 550 skimmers working in the Gulf, with 250 or so in Louisiana waters, 136 in Florida, 87 in Alabama and 76 in Mississippi, although stormy weather in recent days has kept the many of the vessels from working.

The frustration extends to the volunteers who have offered to clean beaches and wetlands. More than 20,000 volunteers have signed up to help in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, yet fewer than one in six has received an assignment or the training required to take part in some chores, according to BP.