NEW ORLEANS — BP mounted a more aggressive response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday as it deployed undersea sensors to better measure the flow of crude while drawing up plans to meet a government demand that it speed up the containment effort.
The financial ramifications of the disaster are growing by the day as the White House and states put pressure on BP to set aside billions of dollars to pay spill-related claims in a move that could quickly drain the company’s cash reserves and hasten its path toward possible bankruptcy.
BP was also trying to meet a Sunday deadline to respond to a letter from the Coast Guard demanding that it intensify the efforts to stop the spill. One of the actions BP took Sunday was to use robotic submarines to position sensors inside the well to gauge how much oil is spilling.
The Obama administration’s point man on the oil spill, Adm. Thad Allen, on Sunday said government officials think the best figures are from a middle-of- the-road estimate, which would put the oil spill at around 66 million gallons — about six times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill. The Associated Press
