Now even the Senate Democrats are pouring pressure on President Obama to avoid future disasters like Deepwater Horizon. Several Senators sent a letter to Obama urging him to have all offshore oil rigs tested so that the Gulf of Mexico incident is not repeated elsewhere.
The Senators, in their letter, stated that the American people needed to feel confident about the relationship between the oil industry and the regulators. They said that the loss in trust can be re-established somewhat by inspecting the rigs and overhauling the procedures used for equipment testing.
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded last month, killing eleven people and spilling millions of gallons of oil into the sea. The official estimate sets the leak at 210,000 gallons every day. The situation is getting worse with every passing day, with the environment suffering more and more. The latest threat from the spill is oil travelling up the west coast of Florida and into the everglades. There are fears that the oil could eventually find its way up the east coast of the U.S.
The White House said that, based on a directive from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, inspections on deepwater drilling rigs had been carried out on thirty oil rigs in the Gulf. Two rigs had had been reported for violations, which have since been corrected. The Minerals Management Service which carried out the inspection is scheduled to continue the inspections every month. The agency carries out around 29,000 such examinations every year.