President Barack Obama today formally unveiled a commission to investigate the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The president said this commission must not disrupt "any ongoing or anticipated civil or criminal investigation" arising from the disaster. Mr Obama, in his executive order establishing the commission, made his first reference to the the possibility of a criminal investigation but did not say such an investigation was under way.
Attorney General Eric Holder said on May 3rd that the Justice Department was part of the investigation into the BP oil spill, although a US official at the time said it was not a criminal inquiry.
Mr Obama also said today that future offshore drilling would require assurances that another massive oil spill would not happen again, as BP scrambled to contain a seabed well leak billowing crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
The president vowed to keep pressure on firms involved in the still-uncapped spill - BP , Halliburton and Transocean - and added he would hold Washington accountable for mending its ways.
"The purpose of this commission is to consider both the root causes of the disaster and offer options on what safety and environmental precautions we need to take to prevent a similar disaster from happening again," Mr Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.
With frustration growing and political risks looming over the spill, Mr Obama appointed former Democratic Senator Bob Graham and former Environmental Protection Agency chief William Reilly to co-chair the bipartisan panel and said he wanted its conclusions in six months.
The spill has raised major questions about the president's earlier proposal to expand offshore drilling as part of strategy to win Republican support for climate change legislation.
A month after the well blowout and rig explosion that killed 11 workers, sheets of rust-coloured heavy oil are starting to clog fragile marshlands on the fringes of the Mississippi Delta, damaging fishing grounds and wildlife.
US lawmakers and scientists have accused BP of trying to conceal what many believe is already the worst US oil spill, eclipsing the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska.
Reuters