GULFPORT, Miss. — President Obama assured residents and state officials in Mississippi that the federal government will push hard to make sure that the British oil giant BP reimburses businesses and individuals for lost income from the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. Obama stopped here Monday at the start of a two-day visit to the battered Gulf Coast, his fourth since the disaster in the Gulf began with an oil rig explosion on April 20.
After meeting with Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana at the Coast Guard station in Gulfport, Mr. Obama said that one of the most important things that ordinary Americans could do to help residents of the Gulf was to visit the area’s beaches, many of which appeared virtually deserted on Monday.
“There’s still a lot of opportunity for visitors to come down here,” Mr. Obama said. “There are a lot of beaches that have not been affected and will not be affected.”
His visit came on a day when the directors of BP, under heavy pressure to set aside billions of dollars to pay for fighting the spill and paying claims, considered holding back a scheduled dividend payment to shareholders, or perhaps paying the dividend in cash instead.
The company also announced plans to step up the amount of leaking oil it can recapture and process, in response to a demand from the administration.
In his effort to reassure the country that his administration is fully focused on dealing with the spill and the cleanup, Mr. Obama scheduled stops in Alabama and Florida as well as Mississippi. He canceled a scheduled trip to Australia and Indonesia this week so that he could devote more of his attention to the oil spill, with its attendant and growing environmental, economic and political damage.
“All in all, we are confronting the largest environmental disaster in our history with the largest environmental response and recovery effort in our history,” he said later Monday at a briefing with reporters in Theodore, Ala., about 65 miles east of Gulfport. He said the “full resources of the government” were being called upon, and acknowledged that the continuing discharge of oil into the gulf was causing untold harm to the region.
“I can’t promise folks here in Theodore or across the Gulf Coast that the oil will be cleaned up overnight,” he said. “It will not be. It’s going to take time for things to return to normal. There’s going to be a harmful effect on many local businesses, and it’s going to be painful for a lot of folks. Folks are going to be frustrated, and some folks are going to be angry. But I promise you this, that things are going to return to normal.”
He ate lunch with several officials and business owners at the end of a pier in Gulfport, where the group feasted on miniature crab cakes, fried shrimp, shrimp salad sandwiches and other items from a local restaurant.
“Seafood from the gulf today is safe to eat, but we need to make sure it stays that way,” the president said.
He is scheduled to return to Washington on Tuesday afternoon and to address the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, speaking directly to Americans about the spill, White House officials said.
BP said on Monday that by the end of June it would be able to recapture between 40,000 and 53,000 barrels of oil a day through the containment cap that the company has placed over the stricken oil well, a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and about 50 miles off the Louisiana shore. That is more than double the 15,000 barrels the company is now collecting . If successful, the plan as outlined in a statement issued by the company on Monday, would happen two weeks earlier than the company originally suggested. It comes in response to a request by the administration over the weekend that BP provide “a faster plan” to siphon off and collect the gushing oil, one with “greater redundancy and reliability.”
Over the shorter term, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the federal incident commander, said at the briefing in Gulfport on Monday that he expects BP to be containing 28,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of the week.
Searching for a way to satisfy both the United States government and its own shareholders on the financial questions surrounding the spill, BP’s board met on Monday and examined three options for what to do with its next dividend, due to be paid later this summer. But the board did not make a final decision, a person with direct knowledge of the discussions said.
The company’s $10.5 billion annual dividend has become a point of contention, as President Obama and a host of critics in the United States said that BP should not be paying out profits to stockholders when huge cleanup costs still loom and when fishermen, oil workers and small-business owners are saying they are having trouble getting compensation from the company.
BP has said it does not expect to announce decisions about its dividend until after its chairman and chief executive speak with Mr. Obama at a meeting he has called for midweek.
“We are considering all these issues and look forward to constructive conversations on Wednesday in the White House,” said Andrew Gowers, a senior BP spokesman.
A person with direct knowledge of the board’s discussions said on Monday that the board was considering three possible options: suspending payment of the dividend for two quarters, paying the dividend in bonus shares rather than cash, or placing an amount equal to the dividend payment in escrow while continuing to pay for the cleanup separately. Under the last option, BP would not tap the escrow fund unless the cost of cleanup work and claims exceeded what it could pay out of its regular cash flow. This option, the person said, could offer some reassurance to both Washington and to shareholders that BP will meet its financial obligations to both.
BP shares fell sharply again on Monday, declining 9.7 percent in New York trading to close at $30.67 a share, about half its level in the weeks before the accident on the rig, the Deepwater Horizon, in April. The actions set for this week reflect the administration’s efforts, nearly two months into the crisis, to telegraph a take-charge decisiveness when Mr. Obama and the federal government are all but powerless to actually resolve the calamity, given the sheer technological challenge of plugging a leak a mile below the gulf’s surface. Mr. Obama’s moves this week, together with events in Congress, put BP on the defensive more than at any other time since the explosion.
The president’s meeting on Wednesday will be his first face-to-face contact with top company officials, after weeks of questions about why he has not done so before. BP has notified the White House that, as requested, the chairman of BP’s board, Carl-Henric Svanberg, will come. He will bring along the company’s embattled chief executive, Tony Hayward, who has been much criticized for statements that have been considered insensitive and self-serving.
Mr. Hayward will be in the hot seat on Thursday as well, testifying before one of several Congressional committees investigating the spill. Already on Monday, lawmakers were sounding off on BP.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, speaking on the floor of the United States Senate on Monday said: “Our message to BP is as simple as this: If you drill and you spill, we’re going to make sure you pay the bill.”
Representatives Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak wrote to Mr. Hayward, saying BP had taken shortcuts that had increased the danger of a “catastrophic well failure.”
