BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and other officials of the company have been invited to meet US President Barack Obama at the White House next week.
The invitation in this regard was sent to Svanberg by the National Incident Commander, Thad Allen. This would be Obama's first meeting with senior BP official since the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20.
In his letter Allen requested Svanberg that "you and any appropriate officials from BP meet with senior administration officials next Wednesday," adding that "President Obama will participate in a portion of this meeting".
Allen stressed in the letter that the oil giant is "responsible for all costs associated with the response to the spill as well as support long term recovery efforts to ensure that all individuals and communities impacted by the spill are made whole".
The administration has pushed BP to pick up indirect costs of the spill, such as the salaries of oil workers laid off by the post-spill moratorium on deepwater drilling, but there's no clear law or precedent that would force the company to pay for that, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
Earlier in the day at the White House, Obama had individual discussions with family members of the victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster.
Obama expressed his condolences and told them that he, the First Lady and the entire administration are behind them and will be there long after the cameras are gone as they go through their unimaginable grief.
"He also said that while offshore drilling is a part of our nation's overall energy strategy, he simply could not go forward with new deepwater drilling until we have the proper safety measures in place to ensure that a tragedy like this never happens again," the White House said in a statement.
