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White House accused of spinning oil report
The White House was accused today of spinning a government scientific report into the amount of oil left in the Gulf of Mexico from the BP spill which had officials declaring that the vast majority of the oil had been removed.
As BP workers finished pouring cement into the well as a first step to permanently sealing it today, environmental groups and scientists–including those working with government agencies to calculate the scale and effects of the spill–said White House officials had painted far too optimistic a picture of a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) into the fate of the oil.
"Recent reports seem to say that about 75% of the oil is taken care of and that is just not true," said John Kessler, of Texas A&M University, who led a National Science Foundation on-site study of the spill. "The fact is that 50% to 75% of the material that came out of the well is still in the water. It's just in a dissolved or dispersed form."
With work progressing on the final phase of the "static kill" sealing of the well, Thad Allen, the Obama administration's top official on the spill, told reporters there would be no new oil in the Gulf.
But those assurances failed to satisfy scientists and environmental groups, who disputed the claim by Carol Browner, the White House energy and climate adviser, that "the vast majority of oil is gone".