U.S. environment chief to visit Gulf, spill spreads

VENICE, Louisiana (Reuters) - The top U.S. environmental official was to visit the Gulf Coast on Sunday as energy giant BP Plc scrambled to contain a widening oil spill.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson planned to return to the Gulf to monitor the EPA's response, while Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was to travel to the BP Command Center in Houston to get an update from the federal science team working on the problem.

The two Cabinet members' missions underscore the rising political and economic stakes for the Obama administration in dealing with the environmental disaster, which grows worse as oil gushes from a ruptured well on the sea floor.

Salazar was also to address the media the day after U.S. President Barack Obama blamed the spill on "a breakdown of responsibility" at BP. Obama also unveiled a commission to investigate the disaster.

The Democratic president, in his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, said offshore drilling could go forward only if there were assurances that such accidents would not happen again.

The spill has raised major questions about Obama's earlier proposal to expand offshore drilling as part of strategy to win Republican support for climate change legislation.

Analysts say mounting ecological and economic damage could also become a political liability for Obama before November's congressional elections.

POLITICAL PRESSURE

While also promising to hold Washington accountable for proper oversight of the industry, Obama ramped up pressure on companies linked to the spill: BP, Halliburton and Transocean Ltd

"First and foremost, what led to this disaster was a breakdown of responsibility on the part of BP and perhaps others, including Transocean and Halliburton," Obama said in his toughest remarks yet on companies linked to the spill.

"And we will continue to hold the relevant companies accountable," he said.

BP stocks have taken a beating in the markets in the month since the well blowout and rig explosion that killed 11 workers and touched off the spill. Its share price shed another 4 percent on Friday in London, extending recent sharp losses.

Sheets of rust-colored heavy oil are clogging fragile marshlands on the fringes of the Mississippi Delta, damaging fishing grounds and wildlife.

Many believe it has already become the worst U.S. oil spill, eclipsing the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska.

In his executive order announcing former Democratic Senator Bob Graham and former EPA chief William Reilly would co-chair the commission, Obama also made his first reference to the possibility of a criminal probe.

BP made no immediate comment on Obama's suggestion that it was to blame for the deep-sea disaster. But the company's chief executive, Tony Hayward, said he welcomed the establishment of the commission and pledged to work with its co-chairmen.

BP and the EPA are locking horns over the dispersants the company is using to try to contain the spill.

The spill has hurt fishermen because federal authorities have closed a wide slew of Gulf waters to fishing. Wildlife and migrating birds have also suffered.

So far, 86 birds, including brown pelicans, have been found dead across four states, and 34 are being treated for oil damage, said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

But this is probably a fraction of the total, since most birds affected by the spill would likely not be found, said Sharon Taylor, a vet and contaminant expert with the Service.

"If you look at the vast ocean of where the spill has been and the time frame, most of us realize there are many wildlife affected that we will never know or get to," she said.

BP on Friday revised downward an earlier estimate that one of its containment solutions, a 1-mile-long siphon tube inserted into the larger of two seabed leaks, was catching 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) of oil per day.

Its latest figures show 2,200 barrels a day.

The company's next planned step is a "top kill" -- pumping heavy fluids and then cement into the gushing well to plug it.

Many scientists dismiss an original 5,000 bpd estimate of the total leaking oil -- often defended by BP executives -- as ridiculously low and say it could be 70,000 barrels (2.9 million gallons/11 million liters) per day or more. (Writing by Ed Stoddard; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Doina Chiacu)