US President Barack Obama travelled to Florida’s Gulf Coast this weekend for a family trip intended to show solidarity with a region struggling in the wake of a massive oil spill.
Obama, his wife Michelle, and their two daughters left Washington yesterday for Panama City, a popular seaside tourist spot that saw its beaches fouled by tar balls from the oil spill.
During the height of the spill, unleashed by an explosion aboard a BP-leased oil rig on April 20, Obama urged his fellow Americans not to abandon the Gulf Coast, and to continue taking vacations in the region, which is heavily dependent on visitor revenue.
His weekend getaway was intended to highlight the region’s tourist attractions, but left him with little time for relaxation.
In addition to making public remarks on the region’s recovery, his schedule included a roundtable meeting with local business leaders and entrepreneurs to discuss the effects of the spill. He is scheduled to return to Washington today, the White House said.
The First Family are scheduled to vacation this month in Martha’s Vineyard, a beautiful island off Massachusetts in the US northeast. The trip comes after US officials announced that energy giant BP’s runaway well has been sealed, and they are moving ahead with plans to make sure it’s truly “killed” by pumping cement in through a relief well under the Gulf of Mexico.
“We’re very close to having the well secured,” US spill chief Thad Allen said.
Pressure tests showed that the well no longer has “direct communication with the reservoir” thanks to a “top kill” operation which pumped drilling mud and cement down through the wellhead, Allen said. About 1,000 barrels of oil are believed to be trapped in the well’s annulus – the space between the inner well tubing and the outer casing – and it’s possible that some of the cement pumped in from above effectively sealed the annulus off from the surface.
The well ruptured when the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank on April 22, two days after a massive explosion that killed 11 workers.
At 4.9 million barrels – enough oil to fill 311 Olympic-sized swimming pools – the disaster is the biggest maritime spill on record.
It threatened the fish and wildlife-rich US Gulf Coast with environmental ruin and plunged residents of coastal communities into months of anguish over their livelihoods and the region’s future.
The week, after his Florida sojourn, Obama is scheduled for a multi-stop trip around the US, starting in Wisconsin, where he is to visit factories specialising in renewable energy production and fundraise for the Democratic party.
Tomorrow evening will see him in Los Angeles for another fundraising event, before he heads on Tuesday to the northwestern state of Washington, for a meeting on health care reform in Seattle, the White House said.