Obama blasts oil companies over blame for growing oil spill

US President Barack Obama hit out at oil companies for trying to shift blame for the Gulf of Mexico slick yesterday and vowed to end the "cozy" ties between the industry and government regulators.

In an unusually harsh tone, Mr Obama said he had ordered "top to bottom" reform of the federal agency that oversees oil drilling, and announced a review of the enforcement of environmental protection rules.

He hit out at the three oil companies linked to the sunken rig gushing oil into the Gulf for seeking to pass the blame, denouncing what he called a "ridiculous spectacle" by their top officials during congressional hearings.

"I will not tolerate more finger pointing or irresponsibility," he said after meeting with top advisors to discuss the growing oil spill, which British Petroleum has tried and failed for three weeks to stem or even slow.

A visibly angered Obama said the federal government also had responsibility to bear, and pledged to strengthen oversight of the oil industry.

"We will trust but we will verify," he promised.

He spoke as BP workers struggled to implement their latest tactic to contain the oil leaking from a ruptured well pipe on the Deepwater Horizon rig by attaching an "insertion tube" to funnel the oil up to a container vessel.

But the method is untested, and the company warned Friday that the earliest chance to try to cap the leak fully would not come until late next week. The oil has been leaking into the sea since the rig collapsed, following an explosion on April 20.

Experts now fear oil may be spewing from the site at a rate of 70,000 barrels (2.9 million gallons) a day, more than 10 times faster than a Coast Guard estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

The new estimate is based on analyses of how far and fast oil particles are moving in a video of the leak released by BP.

The findings suggest the spill is already the worst environmental disaster in US history, eclipsing the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. BP disputes the figures.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward told Britain's Guardian newspaper that the spill is "tiny" by comparison with the amount of water in the Gulf of Mexico.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," Mr Hayward said.

BP's chief operating officer Doug Suttles also questioned the new estimates, saying there was no reliable way to measure the flow.

"But what I can tell you is that we're mounting the biggest response ever done and its not related to whether it's 5,000 barrels a day or a different number," he told CBS News.

Efforts to connect the insertion pipe began Thursday, but the process was taking longer than expected, BP said.

"It's still going. It's really complicated because of the depth," spokesman John Crabtree said.

Rebecca Bernhard, another BP representative, said remote-controlled submarines were working to adjust and position the tube, a 21-inch diameter pipe with a smaller six-inch tube inside.

The tube has been billed as more effective than a previous plan to use a so-called "top hat", a container attached to a siphon tube that would be lowered over the leak to collect and then funnel away the oil.

A first attempt to use the top hat was stymied by the low temperatures and high pressure at the site of the riser pipe rupture, some 5,000 feet below the surface, which caused the oil to form an icy sludge that could not be siphoned.