By Leigh Coleman
BAY ST. LOUIS, Mississippi (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's administration sees the restoration of the Gulf Coast after the BP oil spill as a national priority and the president should not be blamed for the disaster, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said on Saturday.
Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, faced a barrage of questions at a meeting with angry Gulf Coast residents who are worried about their livelihoods and future even as BP and the U.S. government declare the worst of the spill is over.
The British energy giant, which provisionally capped the blown-out Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico on July 15, says the cement seal it pumped down this week is holding, and a relief well to permanently plug the ill-fated borehole is on track to reach its target in mid-August.
Obama's administration has faced criticism over its handling of the world's worst offshore oil spill. It has sent successive delegations of senior officials to tour affected communities, where oil has seeped into ecologically sensitive marshes and fishing grounds and soiled tourist beaches.
Facing public skepticism, it has been defending an assertion by government scientists that around 75 percent of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil leaked by the well had either evaporated, dispersed or otherwise been contained.
"I will tell you this. President Obama should not be blamed for what has happened since this spill," Mabus said.
Mabus is tasked with developing a long-term plan for the restoration of the oil-hit Gulf states and said he would be submitting a report to the president in a few weeks.
"This is not just a Gulf problem. This is a nationwide problem," Mabus said.
"One-third of the nation's seafood comes from this region. Our nation must have a healthy Gulf. I hope we can all do something in this long-term plan to keep our Coast," he added.
But his audience bombarded him with questions about delays in the damage claims process, the future of the fishing industry, air and water quality testing, falling property values and BP's cleanup plans for oil under the ocean surface.
FOCUS ON CLEANUP, CLAIMS
"There is oil out there and we are all stressed to see dead turtles, dead fish and thousands of dead sea creatures in our waters," Jerry Miller, a longtime fisherman from D'Iberville, Mississippi, told Mabus.
"It is not the heat or low oxygen levels like our government is telling us. How are we supposed to fish and in good conscience tell the nation the seafood is safe? How will you fix that in your plan, Mr. Secretary?" he added,
Mabus assured his questioners their concerns would be addressed.
BP finished pumping cement on Thursday into the ruptured well a mile below the surface after injections of drilling mud earlier this week subdued oil and gas pressure.
The so-called "static kill" at the top of the Macondo well will be finished off with a "bottom kill" later in August with more mud and cement injected through a relief well scheduled to intersect the well shaft around August 14-15.
This relief well is regarded as the final solution to plug the reservoir 13,000 feet beneath the seabed.
BP has rushed to clarify comments made on Friday by its chief operating officer for exploration and production, Doug Suttles, who said in New Orleans the crippled well still contained "lots of oil and gas" and that the company would have to think about its future plans for the reservoir.
Anxious to dispel speculation it might be thinking of reopening the well, BP said in a statement: "BP's present focus is entirely on the response effort in the Gulf of Mexico and the future use of the reservoir is not currently under consideration."
BP and government officials have said that while they are scaling down the overall oil spill response operation, they are still fully focused on cleaning up any remaining oil on the coastline and in the water for as long as is necessary.
BP, which already agreed to a $20 billion escrow fund to guarantee coverage of economic damage claims, has said it would sell about $30 billion in assets to address costs related to the spill, and this asset selling process has started.
Although its shares have recovered recently, the company has lost over a third of its market value since the April 20 blast that killed 11 workers, sank the Deepwater Horizon rig and triggered the spill.
(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Miami, Writing by Pascal Fletcher; editing by Todd Eastham)
