By Kristen Hays
HOUSTON (Reuters) - British energy giant BP <:BP.LO:>Plc said on Tuesday it had sharply increased the amount of oil it was capturing from its ruptured Gulf of Mexico well, but it is not clear how much crude is still gushing out.
The London-based company's share price closed down 5 percent in London after U.S. President Barack Obama said he wanted to know "whose ass to kick" over the massive spill.
He told NBC News' "Today" show that if BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward worked for him, he would have fired him by now over his response to the 50-day-old spill, the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
BP already faces a criminal investigation and lawsuits over the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers and triggered the massive spill. Some 120 miles (190 km) of U.S. coastline have been soiled in the disaster that threatens the Gulf Coast's multibillion-dollar fishing industry.
After the spill, the Obama administration imposed a six-month moratorium on new drilling permits for exploration and development wells in waters deeper than 500 feet (152 meters). U.S. officials also refused to approve new drilling in shallow waters until new rules were issued.
A U.S. Interior Department official said the department would issue those amended rules on Tuesday.
BP said on Tuesday it had collected 14,800 barrels of oil on Monday, 33 percent higher than the amount collected on Sunday and the highest capture rate since it installed a new system to contain the oil spill last week.
The latest attempt involves a containment cap placed on top of the gushing pipe on the ocean floor. The total amount of oil collected over four days was about 42,500 barrels, BP said.
"We continue to optimize production and make sure we can take much oil out of that stream as we can," said Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the top U.S. official overseeing the cleanup effort, speaking at a briefing in Washington.
Allen said on Monday neither BP nor the government knew just how much oil was gushing out of the well in the first place. "That's the big unknown right now," he said.
BP has given conservative estimates of the oil flow that have been ridiculed by scientists and U.S. lawmakers. Even the government's much higher estimates of 12,000-19,000 barrels a day seemed on the low side after Allen said the company planned to double its collection of oil from the well to 20,000 barrels every day (840,000 gallons/3.18 million litres).
BP and government officials have said a definitive solution will not come until August when a relief well is drilled.
OBAMA HITS BACK AT CRITICS
Obama, who faces growing criticism that he has appeared detached from the economic and ecological catastrophe hitting four U.S. Gulf states, sharpened his criticism of BP in the NBC interview aired on Tuesday.
Obama said he was talking to experts to find out what had gone wrong "so I know whose ass to kick."
Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer and Co, said it was "not a coincidence" that BP's shares were down after Obama's comments increased pressure on the company to fix the mess.
The European oils sector was down overall, however, on the back of lower oil prices due to economic worries. In London, BP shares closed down 5 percent, against a drop of 2 percent in the STOXX Europe 600 Oil and Gas index.
In New York, the company's American depositary shares fell more than 6 percent. BP shares have lost about a third of their value since the crisis erupted. U.S. investors have been particularly sensitive to the political risks BP faces.
Shares of offshore oil and gas driller Transocean Ltd tumbled in New York trading to their lowest in 18 months, as the market worried about the company's liability for the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon rig.
BP has already spent more than $1 billion (694 million pounds) on cleaning up the spill, which has fouled wildlife refuges in Louisiana and barrier islands in Mississippi and Alabama and also sent tar balls ashore on beaches in Florida.
One-third of the Gulf's federal waters, or 78,000 square miles (200,000 square km), remains closed to fishing, and the toll of dead and injured birds and marine animals is climbing.
U.S. weather forecasters gave their first confirmation that some of the oil leaking from BP's well has lingered beneath the surface rather than rising to the top. Undersea oil depletes the water's oxygen content and threatens marine life like mussels, clams, crabs, eels, jellyfish and shrimp.
Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said: "NOAA is confirming the presence of very low concentrations of subsurface oil."
The top U.S. energy forecaster, the Energy Information Administration, said the six-month moratorium on drilling should cut U.S. crude output in 2011 by about 25 million barrels.
That represents less than five days' worth of overall U.S. production.
In Washington, Chris Jones, whose brother died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion, made an emotional appeal to Congress to change a federal law limiting the amount of money that can be recovered by the families of those killed.
Testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Jones had pointed words for BP's Hayward, who said after the accident that he wanted his life back.
"Mr. Hayward, I want my brother's life back," Jones said, choking back tears.
Hayward has been invited to testify before a U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on June 17, the panel said on Tuesday. The hearing will focus on BP's role in the rig explosion and subsequent spill.
(Additional reporting by Tom Bergin in London, Michael Miller and Ernest Scheyder in New York, Anna Driver in Venice, Tom Doggett, Ayesha Rascoe and Timothy Gardner in Washington, Louisiana; writing by Pascal Fletcher and Ross Colvin; editing by Mohammad Zargham)
