Reply #18: Only BP has expertise to stop spill, top U.S. response official says

[IScreamSundays]

Source: Miami Herald

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. official leading the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill said Sunday that only BP had the expertise to plug the gaping hole in its deepwater well and that he trusted the oil company was doing its best.

The comments by Adm. Thad Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, signaled that the U.S. government wouldn't take a larger role in stopping the five-week-old spill even as frustration along the Gulf Coast grows over the Obama administration's policy of letting BP run the effort.

While officials in Louisiana readied for an expansive oil slick to make landfall on Grand Isle, a major tourist hub, BP officials said they would deploy late Tuesday or before dawn Wednesday their latest attempt to stop the spill - a complex "top kill" maneuver that involves pumping the hole full of mud and cement.

"They have the eyes and ears that are down there. They are necessarily the modality by which this is going to get solved," Allen said on CNN's "State of the Union" program. "Our responsibility is to conduct proper oversight to make sure they do that."

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Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/23/1644306/only-bp-has-expertise-to-stop.html