BP Plc says it will pay "all necessary and appropriate cleanup costs" related to the massive oil slick caused by the explosion last month of one of its oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP said in a statement on its website Monday that it took responsibility for the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, saying: "we will clean it up."
The company adds it will pay compensation for "legitimate and objectively verifiable" claims for property damage, personal injury, and commercial losses.
And in an interview with NBC's "Today Show", BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said the company was "absolutely responsible" for cleaning up the disaster. He added the company was preparing for a "worst case scenario" that it would need to contain an ongoing spill for two to three more months.
Responders face major challenges
Meanwhile, efforts to stop the flow of oil continued Monday, but many observers said it's beginning to feel like a futile effort.
Robotic submersibles worked through Sunday night trying to engage a blowout preventer that would shut off the valve that is allowing the leak to continue, CTV's Lisa LaFlamme reports from Venice, Louisiana.
"But so far that valve isn't responding. So nothing seems to be going right at this moment," she said.
Strong winds and choppy waters are also preventing crews from trying to burn the rust-coloured oil off the ocean surface. And winds are hampering efforts to lay down giant floating booms to contain the oil.
The slick is now 50 kilometres long across the Louisiana coast, threatening beaches and wildlife across Mississippi and the Florida Panhandle.
A British Columbia-based company, Versatech, which manufactures oil spill containment booms, is sending more than three and a half kilometres of booms to help corral the huge oil sheen. But its president, Saeed Javadi, says the waves in the Gulf are making it difficult to use the equipment.
"Booms can be fairly effective in calm waters. The problem is when you have waves, the oil can go over and under the containment booms. So they have to use more booms and bigger sizes of booms," he explained to Canada AM.
"It is possible, if the weather permits and the winds calm down, to totally contain the oil. But the main problem is that the oil is coming from so far down in the sea that by the time it gets to (the surface), it has already spread very thin."
LaFlamme notes that the good news is that those strong winds are also preventing the oil from reaching the shore, where it could devastate beaches, marshes and wildlife, as well as fertile fishing grounds in the Gulf.
"It's a little bit of a mixed blessing in that strong winds are preventing them from laying down the barriers necessary to contain the oil, but on the upside, it's keeping the oil further away from shore," she said.
Dead sea turtles wash up on shore
Already though, at least 20 dead sea turtles have found on beaches in Mississippi. None of the turtles have oil on them, but Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Miss., said the turtles could have ingested oily fish or breathed in oil on the surface.
BP PLC, the owner of the now-destroyed oil rig, is reportedly planning to try another method to stop the geyser of oil.
The new plan is to lower 74-ton, concrete-and-metal boxes overtop of the ruptured wellhead more than a kilometre underwater, and then siphon the oil up to a barge waiting at the surface.
Such a procedure has been used in some well blowouts, but never in the depth of water in this disaster. And even if the cap works, it won't be in place for at least another six to eight days.
That means oil will continue to pour from the seafloor for at least another week.
A satellite image analysis by the University of Miami found the oil slick's size had tripled over the last two days, which could indicate the oil is gushing from the well faster than it did in the early days after the April 20 blast.
Size of spill still unclear
The U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday that it is nearly impossible to estimate how much oil has spilled into the water since the rig explosion, but put the figure at perhaps six million litres.
However, other experts have estimated that as much as 34 million litres had been spilled.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist says it's not really accurate to call this an oil spill.
"It's not a spill, it's a flow. Envision sort of an underground volcano of oil and it keeps spewing over 200,000 gallons every single day, if not more."
At the Coast Guard's more conservative rate, it could be only a matter of weeks before the spill passes the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident as the worst U.S. oil disaster in the country's history.
The difference in this case is that the Exxon Valdez held a finite amount of oil; this spill will continue for as long as it takes to be stopped.
Meanwhile, criticism about the response to the disaster continues.
Critics say both BP PLC and the U.S. government should have done more to prevent the explosion and subsequent leak. Locals are also upset about what they perceive to be the government's slow reaction to the disaster.
In response, White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs posted a blog entry entitled "The Response to the Oil Spill," in which he outlined the administration's day-by-day response to the explosion.
Obama has also announced he is halting any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster.
With files from Associated Press
