Obama's Gulf tour reaches Pensacola Beach

From staff and wire reports

President Obama prepared to address the nation Tuesday night with an "I'm in charge" message as the blown-out BP well deep in the Gulf of Mexico gushed crude oil for the 57th day, creating an unprecedented environmental and economic disaster.

In his first address from the Oval Office, Obama will discuss the catastrophic oil spill and his vision for the nation's energy future.

Obama visited Florida's Pensacola Beach on Tuesday, the second day of a tour of Gulf states affected by the massive BP oil spill.

He strolled the beach with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who oversees the government's response to the environmental disaster.

Obama walked to the edge of the emerald green water seemingly clear of tar balls, then went to a snack shop. Down the beach, swimmers were in the water.

As he walked away, a crowd of people behind ropes began chanting, "Save our beach, save our beach." It wasn't clear whether the president heard them.

The president arrived at the beach shortly before 9 a.m. Boom was visible in the waterways as the motorcade drove over the Pensacola Bay bridge.

In Gulf Breeze, spectators lined the route to wave and take pictures. Several onlookers held signs showing support — such as "Thanks for your support, Mr. President. You still have mine."

Waiting at Pensacola Beach on Tuesday morning, Greg Simonds hoped for some kind of progress in the oil spill.

"We just want some resolution," the 27-year-old Pensacola man said. "Everybody says they are doing something. It doesn't seem like they are."

Simonds said the spill canceled a fishing tournament he and his son planned to participate in. "We've lived here all our lives,"he said. "It's going to be destroyed."

Heather Shimp and her 12-year-old daughter, Lily, were at the beach early this morning to wait for the president. "I don't know exactly what he's going to accomplish," said Shimp, a Pensacola resident. "I think a lot of it is show, but I guess I am glad he is here. It's just a tough situation. It's hard to even wrap your mind around what it happening."

Obama spoke to military personnel at the Pensacola Naval Air Techical Training Center before returning to Washington.

Speaking to thousands of students, Obama called the oil spill the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history and said military units would be used to respond.

"This is an assault on our shores, and we're going to fight back with everything we've got," he said. "People have a right to be angry. And everybody is bracing for more."

Pensacola and the Gulf Coast will recover and thrive again, he stressed.

In his speech Tuesday night, the president is likely to detail the administration's effort to respond to what he's seen on his trip to the Gulf, his fourth visit to the region since the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew April 20. He'll probably renew his push for comprehensive energy legislation designed to move the nation away from fossil fuels.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that the government was wresting the claims-handling process from the British petroleum giant to make economically distressed individuals and businesses "whole."

On the matter of the disputed damage payments, Gibbs said, "We have to get an independent claims process. I think everyone agrees that we have to get BP out of the claims processes and, as I said, make sure that fishermen, hotel owners have a fast, efficient and transparent claims process so that they're getting their livelihoods replaced."

Monday, Obama moved to activate his campaign network on the issue. In an e-mail, he asked supporters to push for Senate passage of an energy bill sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.

"This is an issue that Washington has long ignored in favor of protecting the status quo," the president wrote. "If we refuse to heed the warnings from the disaster in the Gulf, we will have missed our best chance to seize the clean-energy future we know America needs to thrive in the years and decades to come."

BP said a fire possibly caused by lightning shut down a system capturing oil from the gushing well in the Gulf. The fire, spotted at midmorning on the drill ship Discover Enterprise, was quickly extinguished.

BP said there were no injuries. As a precaution, a system siphoning oil from a containment cap above the well was shut down but resumed later Tuesday.

• BP won permission to start burning oil and gas piped up from the seafloor well as part of a pledge to more than triple how much crude it stops from spewing into the Gulf.

Federal authorities gave permission late Monday for BP to use a new method that involves pumping oil from the broken wellhead to a special ship on the surface, where it would be burned off rather than collected. The British oil giant announced Monday that it hopes to trap as much as 2.2 million gallons of oil daily by the end of June as it deploys additional containment equipment, including the flaring system.

• The chief executive of ExxonMobil told Congress that the spill wouldn't have happened if BP had properly designed its deep-water well, followed procedures, trained its employees and conducted adequate tests.

Exxon's Rex Tillerson testified Tuesday on Capitol Hill with other oil company executives before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He told lawmakers the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in 1989 changed the way his company operated. In prepared testimony, Tillerson wrote that Exxon doesn't go ahead with operations "if we cannot do so safely."

• Internal documents released Monday show BP acted to cut costs in the weeks before the catastrophic blowout in the Gulf as it dealt with one problem after another on the doomed rig. The activity prompted BP engineer Brian Morel to describe the Deepwater Horizon as a "nightmare well" in an e-mail April 14, six days before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 people.

• BP spokesman Bill Salvin said the company has contracted with actor Kevin Costner and Ocean Therapy Solutions to use 32 of their centrifuge machines designed to separate oil from water.

"We recognized they had potential and put them through testing, and that testing was done in shallow water and in very deep water, and we were very pleased by the results," Salvin said.

Contributing:Kathy Kiely in Washingon; Pensacola News Journal; Carolyn Pesce in McLean, Va.; Associated Press