Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Day 46 of Oil Spill: Cap in Place on Broken Oil Well in Gulf; A Look at the Real Oil Giants; Political Gusher; Oil Slick Lurks Off Florida; Emotion vs. Science

Aired June 04, 2010 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, I'm John Roberts.

KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Kiran Chetry. Glad you're with us. Happening this morning, a mile underwater in the dead of night underwater robots able to jam a top cap on the severed pipe line, but after several failed attempts, and it's still not known whether or not this latest attempt will actually be a success.

ROBERTS: They are the heartbreaking images that we feared would come -- birds found on Louisiana's Grand Isle, some dead, others fighting for their lives, covered by a thick coat of crude. It's an indication that the heaviest oil from the damaged well is now beginning to come ashore.

CHETRY: Heartbreaking to see those pictures.

President Obama last night told our own Larry King that his patience is wearing thin and he's "furious at the entire situation."

ROBERTS: And a CNN exclusive, our Kyra Phillips is the only reporter allowed to go on the rig where BP is desperately trying to cap the well and cut off the oil spill with those relief wells. She traveled there with the National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, and Kyra joins us from New Orleans.

Kyra, an extraordinary opportunity to go out there and see this firsthand. You also got to spend an awful lot of time with Admiral Allen as he tries to keep so many plates in the air that I don't know how he does it.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is pretty unbelievable. We basically embedded with him for a couple of days. You're right. From the minute he wakes up to the end of the day, his blackberry and cell phone and wireless computer, he is constantly communicating from the White House to the rigs to all of the various governors that want resources and help from him.

It's unbelievable how he juggles this. Basically we saw how this man lives in a real life pressure cooker. And for the first time we went from an early morning call with the security detail at Starbucks and days later ended up on those rigs, first time any journalist has had access, first time any journalist has broadcasted live from there.

And we tried to as quickly as possible with very limited time put this in perspective from the eyes of the workers on those rigs.

(BEGIN VIDETAPE)

ADMIRAL THAD ALLEN, NATIONAL INCIDENT COMMAND: The real focus right now is to get the containment cap in place below the discover enterprise and continue to drill the two relief wells.

PHILLIPS (on camera): They are working to get the top hat to seal that gusher, how does that relief well -- how will it benefit --

ALLEN: It is being drilled right below us, going down, starting to be angled over. At somewhere between 16,000 and 18,000 feet below the sea floor it will intersect the well bore and they'll pump heavy mud to stabilize it to put a plug in or do what they call a bottom kill.

After that is done, there should be no pressure below the blowout preventer, cap the well and bring it up and do forensic analysis on it.

PHILLIPS: Explain the connection, the bottom kill here and how that is going to make what's happening on the discovery enterprise successful?

ALLEN: The intention is to intersect the wellbore and pump heavy mud in to counteract the pressure of the oil coming up to allow them to plug or kill the well. Once that is done, you can do things like remove the blowout preventer and try to figure out what happened.

PHILLIPS: How soon do you think that could happen, Ted, or are you working as fast as you can?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're working as efficiently and safely as possible.

PHILLIPS: I know you don't want to make any mistakes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

PHILLIPS: How has it been for you? What's it like to get up in the morning and deal with media scrutiny and do everything you can to make this happen?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It can be frustrating at times. The thing is we have to make sure the crew is focused on the job. At the end of the day, we want to drill this well as efficiently as possible and we want to do it with no incidents or injury to anybody. In fact, we want to have everyone go home in better condition than when they came on the scene.

Part of the problem is there is a lot of outside scrutiny on what it is that we're doing out here. And I think the American population is wanting this well to be done. They want it now. We all want it done now.

But we have to understand this is a well that killed 11 people. We have to understand that we're sitting over top of one of the world's best drilling rigs. The well we are drilling right now killed 11 people and sunk a rig. And so we're not going to speed up and we're going to do this as safe as possible, we're not going to hurt anybody, and that's our goal.

PHILLIPS: What's the deal with the water spray taking place next to the enterprise?

ALLEN: You can see the water being sprayed out of the stern. There is oil coming up out of the riser pipe until we get the containment cap on it. They are putting water over the surface to reduce the volatile organic compounds that come up off the oil that produce inhalant problems so the fumes don't come up.

PHILLIPS: When we were flying in, the smell was so strong, it was like a fresh tar smell.

ALLEN: One way to reduce that is to spray water to reduce the vapor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: Kyra, indeed that is something we have never seen before. We've been watching the shots from the bottom of the ocean but seen nothing on top of the rigs. And in all of this, and it has been lost in the Transocean folks, 11 people died in that initial explosion. How are they being remembered by their colleagues?

PHILLIPS: I asked them that. I said every day you wake up, do you think of the coworkers that's you've lost? They said every day they think about them and survivors too. They talk to the survivors and reliving the experience and not being able to sleep.

And right before I left, John, they gave me this magazine, called the Beacon magazine, what Transocean puts out in the company. This is a special memorial edition, Deepwater Horizon in memory of 11 crew members lost at sea.

And these have pictures of every worker killed in the rig explosion, and family pictures and pictures of them with their wives and children. "Aaron Keene, crane operator, Donald O'Neil Clark, assistant driller, Steven Ray Curtis, assistant driller, Gordon Lewis Jones, drilling specialist, Keith Blair Manuel, senior drilling fluid specialist, Dewey Allen Rivett, driller. Adam T. Weise, floor hand -- remembrance and honor."

This is what they wanted me to show all of Americans because they simply don't feel that enough has gotten out of the coverage to honor them.

ROBERTS: Definitely. We're obviously watching the environmental impact and efforts to kill the well and all of that, but you have to remember those people who died in the tragic accident. Kyra, thanks so much. We'll see you next hour.

CHETRY: Thanks, Kiran.

We're also getting a look at how the oil is affecting the wildlife in the gulf. A CNN crew took a heartbreaking video of a small flock of bird covered in crude. They can hardly move and they are struggling to breathe.

Our Rob Marciano has been traveling between locations and joins us live on the phone with the very latest. Of course this was the fear that this was going to happen. They knew it was going to happen, yet we're just starting to see some of the most heartbreaking pictures coming in about the impact.

One thing a lot of people want to know. What is the fate for these birds? Can they be cleaned and put back into the wild or is it too late?

ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST (via telephone): They look like they are moving pretty good and time is of the essence. Luckily for them there is a rehabilitation center pretty close. So they'll get them in there and rinsed off, and they use Dawn to wash them down.

Pelicans are more difficult to clean. They take longer. These, I'm not quite sure which species they are. They look to be northern Ganette. They'll get them in and rinse them. They have a good success rate of doing it. I have confidence at the folks at Ft. Jackson. There's no doubt on my mind they worked on them quickly yesterday and hopefully got them back to health.

But as you mentioned, these are the pictures we envisioned and we feared. And for a while there, you know, it was kind of like the oil is staying off the Mississippi and Florida coastlines. For a while there you started to think optimistically, that maybe we're not going to see these pictures. Maybe the oil won't get to the shorelines of the northern Gulf.

And I'm afraid we're lulled into that sense of security and reality. It is certainly setting in, not only for birds we're seeing pictured here on AMERICAN MORNING but also for the coastline where I am, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida, signs of the oil washing ashore here. It's becoming all too real for people across the gulf coast.

CHETRY: And some are saying this could be the tip of iceberg, that the animals will go to the ocean floor and we won't see them.

And the other concern also is protecting these marshlands, as we've talked about. We were even down there a week ago. They had had booms up there but the pelicans were not covered in oil, and now we know they are and they are trying to rescue them. It seems as though they are fighting the clock.

MARCIANO: Mostly definitely, and you're fighting that big sludge of oil. It will be a while before we get it plugged and get it cleaned up. It will be a week and month-long battle. And those wetlands are so vast. And we're really just -- when we send search and rescue teams out there we're truly just covering the outskirts of it, wherever you can get there by boat, because they don't want to go drudging along the sensitive wildlife areas to look for oiled birds because you end up doing more damage to the habitat by walking through them than you do saving birds.

So they are covering it by boat, air boat and other types of boat that can get into some shallow water. You're not getting into the wetlands and into those grass areas where they nest, where the birds hang out.

So we're just seeing a small percentage of the birds that are affected, and many of them, if not most of them, will never being accounted for in the middle of the marsh.

And this doesn't include, Kiran, what's going on in the deep water. You've got species out there that don't even come close to shore, and no doubt that hundreds and thousands of them are being killed and floating, drifting down to the bottom of the ocean floor.

CHETRY: Pictures are hard to see but they illuminate the scope of this disaster. Rob Marciano for us this morning, thank you.

ROBERTS: The cap is in place, but will it work? And what is BP planning next to clean up its giant mess in the Gulf? We'll talk with the oil giant's chief operating officer Doug Suttles coming up next. It's 13 minutes after the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Day 46 of the oil disaster in the Gulf. And late last night, BP got the cap in place on the broken well. Here's a live look at the site under the gulf's surface right now. So has this fix finally worked and what comes next in BP's plan?

Let's bring in Doug Suttles. He's the chief operating officer for BP for exploration and production.

Doug, a lot riding obviously on this capping operation. We've been looking at the pictures all morning. And a lot of folks across the country probably are as well. And they still see the oil coming out from underneath that cap. Kind of what phase are you in now and how should people interpret those pictures?

DOUG SUTTLES, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, BP: Yes, John, what you're seeing is, of course we did get the cap in place successfully last night. And the oil you see escaping is actually coming through four vents that are designed into the top of the cap. And what we will be doing through the course of today is as we bring this system on and start capture the oil, we'll successively close each of those four vents until hopefully we only have a very small amount of oil coming around the base of the cap. So what you're seeing right now is not a surprise. It's part of the design. It's to prevent the hydrates from forming. And as we go through the day, we'll successfully close these vents. ROBERTS: Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, said in regards to this top hat operation, that it should enable us to contain and collect the majority of the oil and gas that's flowing from the well. Are you that optimistic about it?

SUTTLES: Well, John I think it should work. It should be able to do that. And the reason is we've had, as you know, two other tries at this. The first one, the dome, didn't work. The second one, the riser insertion tool did. We learned a lot about that. It was never going to capture all of the flow. This design, it won't get every bit of it. But if we can get it optimized, it should get the vast majority so we have very little oil leaking into the sea.

ROBERTS: All right. You know, the president was on with Larry King last night and Larry asked him if he was angry about what he was seeing there. The president said certainly he was, and he went a little bit beyond that. Let me just play for you what he said last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KING, HOST, "LARRY KING LIVE": Are you angry at BP?

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know, I am furious at this entire situation because this is an example of where somebody didn't think through the consequences of their actions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: So he said clearly there, BP didn't think through the consequences of their actions, their actions being drilling at such a deep level. Is that a fair assessment, Mr. Suttles, of what's been going on?

SUTTLES: You know, John, to the best of my knowledge, the techniques and the capability we were applying here are the same as the rest of the industry was applying. I don't know exactly what caused this. But the capabilities, the technologies we were deploying as far as I know were those that were used by all of the rest of the industry. I mean, we do a lot of this around the world. We do more of this deep water work than any other international oil company.

ROBERTS: But your CEO, Tony Hayward, just to go back to him in an editorial in the "Wall Street Journal" today, says the industry and the government did not anticipate this type of accident in which all the fail-safe mechanisms failed.

You know, I guess, obviously, when you're drilling in that deep of water and you know the environment that you're in, I would expect that you would probably take into account even the things that you might not normally foresee. Why was the worst case scenario not taken into account before the drill went in the bottom of the ocean?

SUTTLES: You know, John, the last line of defense is this blowout preventer, and it's got multiple mechanisms to stop the flow. And that didn't work. And I think that this is going to cause the entire industry and clearly has caused the United States government to rethink what we need to have in place before we drill these wells.

ROBERTS: Yes.

SUTTLES: The whole industry believed that line of defense would work and those fail-safe systems would work. But here they didn't. And we don't yet know why but clearly there needs to be more than what we had.

ROBERTS: You know, in an operating well, correct me if I'm wrong here, because I'm just really starting to get my head around with all of this, with offshore drilling. It's a very complex operation. You put a down well preventer into a well that's in production. You hadn't quite gotten to that phase now. That's one of -- that's a -- a preventer, as I understand it, it's got to have positive pressure on to stay open. And if you ever lose that positive control, boom, it slaps shut and cuts off the flow of oil. How close were you to putting one of those in?

SUTTLES: That would have -- John, that would have gone in once we did what we call completed the well. In other words, finished it so that it was for production. And all of the wells in the offshore environment have those in them and they are another line of defense here. We had not gone to that stage of the operation yet. But once we got there, we would have installed that -- this subsurface safety valve, as they call it.

ROBERTS: Right. Congressman Ed Markey who's the chairman of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee said this of BP yesterday. Quote, "From junk shots to top hats, the spill shows that BP and the oil industry paid more attention to drilling ultra-deep instead of creating ultra-safe technologies to prevent and respond to a crisis." Before you drill any more of these ultra-deep wells, do you expect that you're going to revise your disaster plans?

SUTTLES: John, undoubtedly, lots of things will change here. I mean, they'll have to. I mean, we all believe that this event was extraordinarily unlikely to happen. We believe that the safety systems would perform and function and prevent it from occurring. That didn't work here. We still don't know exactly why. But what we do know is it didn't work here. And we have to be able to stop these things so that this can't happen again. And I think this moratorium is in place to allow us to do that.

ROBERTS: All right. Well, we'll be watching very closely today the operations with this top cap. And I think it's safe to say that we're all wishing you a lot of luck in your ability to be able to get this thing under control. Doug Suttles, thanks for joining us this morning.

SUTTLES: Thanks, John.

CHETRY: It's been 46 days into this catastrophe and a lot of questions about who really controls the world's oil. Is it BP? Is it Exxon? Well, Christine Romans is next with the real oil giants.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CHETRY: Christine Romans here "Minding Your Business" this morning. We're talking oil yet again at 24 minutes past the hour. But who's really in control of the world's oil supply?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

CHETRY: It's not necessarily who you think.

ROMANS: You think of BP as this huge international company that is so powerful and it is quite frankly. I these are companies that have been very closely tied with American government, the American government and the western governments for years. And why? Because the alternative is oil reserves controlled and owned and exploited by other governments.

Who controls the world's oil reserves? More than 90 percent is controlled by governments. Only 10 percent is controlled by international companies like BP. If you have a list of the 20 top oil and gas companies, you have to go 17 names down that list before you find an oil company that is an independent international oil company. The rest are all governments. Governments control 75 percent of production and 60 percent of the undiscovered reserves.

Who are these big, huge energy companies? Saudi Arabia. Gazprom, that's Russia. China, Iran, Venezuela, Brazil. By the time you go down to ExxonMobil, ExxonMobil has 7.7 billion barrels of reserves. Saudi Arabia has 259 billion barrels of reserves. And on this whole list, you have to keep going down until you get to BP, which is 5.5 billion. The reason I really started thinking about this is because there was a report from an analyst who said, you know, BP maybe it would sell its 26 percent stake in Prudhoe Bay up in Alaska.

ROBERTS: And sell it to?

ROMANS: And sell it to -- maybe the Chinese would want to buy that. Can you imagine the political outcry if BP had to start selling off big important assets. Who are -- many of the most likely buyers of those assets? Governments. Governments who use the oil industry for political purposes and to keep political power, not necessarily for the same kinds of things that the United States would like to be pushing. So it becomes not just an oil story, it becomes a political and economic and some cases a national defense story because BP also supplies oil to the U.S. military. So it just shows you it's so much more complicated --

ROBERTS: Well, the Chinese would probably continue to do that, don't you think?

ROMANS: Well, that would be certainly interesting, wouldn't it? Remember the outcry when the Chinese tried to buy Unocal a couple of years ago.

CHETRY: Yes. Absolutely.

ROMANS: I mean, just --- there we go.

CHETRY: Much more complicated.

ROMANS: Yes.

CHETRY: And it already seems complicated.

ROMANS: Oh, yes.

CHETRY: So we're out of luck here.

ROMANS: Another wrinkle.

CHETRY: Thanks, Christine.

Well, coming up at 7:40, we're going to be joined by Florida Governor Charlie Crist. He asked BP for $100 million yesterday to help his state deal with the disaster. This as the oil moves closer and closer to Florida's shores. He's going to be joining us in 15 minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Coming up on the half hour now, that means it's time for this morning's top stories.

BP has positioned a cap over the gushing oil well. But as you can see, oil and gas is still spewing into the water. Still unclear at this point if the cap is successfully attached. BP says, though, that it's supposed to be spewing out oil right now. There are vents that are open and they'll be closing those over the next few hours.

And we'll find out maybe by tomorrow, the day after whether this latest fix should siphon most but not all of the oil spilling in the gulf.

CHETRY: And a look now at what could happen if the oil continues to pour into the gulf in the weeks and months ahead. These are computer models, one from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This scenario has the oil entering the gulf's loop current, traveling around Florida, winding up on the beaches of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and others by July. It could then slowly move out further toward Bermuda eventually reaching Europe.

ROBERTS: President Obama is heading to the gulf again today. It's his third trip since the disaster started. 46 days ago. He's facing criticism for not showing his anger about the spill previously. In an exclusive interview with our Larry King, the president made his feelings known and also made it clear, this is BP's mess to fix.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: BP caused this spill. We don't yet know exactly what happened but whether it's a combination of human error, them cutting corners on safety or a whole other variety of variables. They are responsible. I am furious at this entire situation because this is an example of where somebody didn't think through the consequences of their actions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: The president plans on meeting with local business owners in the gulf during the trip.

CHETRY: Well, the growing oil spill has raised the political stakes as well, not just for President Obama but for others hoping to make a splash in the mid-term elections.

ROBERTS: Jim Acosta is following that, he's live in Washington with an "AM Original" for us this morning. And Jim, any time something like this happens, there's a fair amount of politics involved.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think that is fair to be said, John and Kiran, you're right. We talked to somebody who is a political animal, Terry Mcauliffe, the former DNC chairman. He says President Obama needs to amp it up. And the president's latest trip to the gulf is another signal that this oil disaster is fast becoming the biggest political game-changer for this election year.

The question, who is going to get slimed?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA (voice-over): President Obama is dealing with two gushers one at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the other out of Washington where there's no shortage of advice on how to handle the oil spill.

TERRY MCAULIFFE, FORMER DNC CHAIR: If I were President Obama, I would call everybody in from all over the world. I have no pride in this. We've got to shut this thing down.

ACOSTA: Former DNC chairman Terry Mcauliffe is urging the president to call the world's top oil experts down to the gulf.

MCAULIFFE: Let's get all the experts in. Let's meet daily down there in the gulf coast, let's have a morning, nightly meeting. How do we fix this thing?

ACOSTA: He understands Mr. Obama is no Bill Clinton when it comes to empathy.

MCAULIFFE: He probably would have moved the White House down there.

ACOSTA: The spill could also contaminate candidates for Congress, an environmental group has an ad targeting Arkansas Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln, who raised more than a half million dollars of campaign cash from oil and gas companies during her career.

ANNOUNCER: It's time to send big oil a message, on Tuesday, send Blanche Lincoln packing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The time for waiting is over.

ACOSTA: But the disaster could actually redeem Bobby Jindal.

BOBBY JINDAL: Good evening and happy Mardi Gras. I'm Bobby Jindal.

ACOSTA: Louisiana's Republican governor was written off as a presidential prospect by many in Washington after his infamous 2009 response to the "State of the Union."

STU ROTHENBERG, ROTHENBERG POLITICAL REPORT: He was more a target of ridicule than of respect after he gave a response to the "State of the Union" where he was regarded as not ready for prime time. Now he's in prime time and he looks very ready.

ACOSTA: The same goes for Florida Governor Charlie Crist. One month he breaks with the GOP in his bid for the Senate. Next in the national spotlight.

GOV. CHARLIE CRIST (I), FLORIDA: The first order of business for me is make sure we're protecting our beautiful Florida.

ACOSTA: Terry McAuliffe who recently purchased an electric car company from the Chinese, says the spill is about something much bigger than politics.

MCAULIFFE: WE have got to get serious about getting off of oil. We need people buying electric vehicles.

ACOSTA (on camera): It sounds like Terry Mcauliffe is trying to sell me a car.

MCAULIFFE: And I hope you buy one. $13,000, $15,000 70 miles to the charge. Come on. 45 miles. It would be a great car.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: He was trying to sell me a car, by the way. They are not in the U.S. just yet but pretty soon. There is a chance the spill could revive democrats' attempts to get a clean energy bill through the Congress. They like to replace drill, baby, drill, with green, baby green. John and Kiran.

CHETRY: Got you. And like John said before, kill, baby kill is what we need first.

(CROSSTALK)

ACOSTA: Let's do that first. Exactly. Yes.

ROBERTS: And now of course, this raises yet another question, Jim. Would you buy a car from that man?

ACOSTA: Now, John, you told me before you come from a family of car dealers. So you know, Terry Mcauliffe, he's having a second act there -

ROBERTS: Wait a second. My mother was a receptionist at a car dealership. That's not exactly a family of car dealers. Thanks, Jim.

ACOSTA: That's true. That's a slight difference. That's true.

Well, you know, Terry said this will be a car you can plug into your house. So you know, he was bemoaning the fact that we don't have charging stations and all that in this country and the Chinese and the Middle East, they are eating our lunch when it comes to green technology. This is something he say will have practical, you know, capabilities in this country. It will be interesting to watch.

ROBERTS: Yes. Just like Tom Friedman said flying from Hong Kong to JFK was going from like the Jetsons to the Flintstones. We got to get in our game. Thanks, Jimmy.

ACOSTA: You bet.

CHETRY: (INAUDIBLE) he talks about the oil spill and he tries to sell a car.

ROBERTS: That's Terry.

CHETRY: There you go.

Well, so ahead we're going to be speaking to Florida Governor Charlie Crist. His message to BP, send us another $50 million for oil spill cleanup. This is as the oil gets closer and closer to Florida's coast. Huge tourism time of year. How is the state dealing with it? We're going to be speaking with the governor of Florida just ahead. 36 minutes past the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: Thirty-nine minutes past the hour right now. There's a look under water again. Oil is still spewing from the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico but they were able to place a cap on top of it, not as tight of a fit as they would have gotten if it had been a clean cut, but we should know whether or not it is effective soon. It's still up in the air right now as to whether or not it's going to have a significant impact on the flow of oil coming out of the gulf.

Meanwhile, Florida Governor Charlie Crist has seen the enemy from the air and it is closing in. Crist flew over the spill yesterday and spotted a light sheen of crude less than four miles from Pensacola's shore. It seems inevitable now that Florida is about to come face to face with this environmental menace. So how is the state preparing to deal with it? We're joined right now by Florida Governor Charlie Crist from Tallahassee this morning. Governor, thanks for being with us.

CRIST: Good morning, Kiran. Good to be with you.

CHETRY: So what is the latest assessment in terms of landfall and just how big of an impact this oil is going to have in the coming days on your shores?

CRIST: Well, as you accurately reported, at the introduction, I flew over the area yesterday in one of our black hawk helicopters from the National Guard. And we did see some of the sheen, the thinner type oil, if you will, about three-and-a-half to four miles out. And not until about another 10 miles did we see additional amounts of oil, again, types in the sheen type fashion.

But some news accounts this morning are indicating that there may be some tar balls on the beach in Pensacola. That's very disturbing news. Obviously, it's not the kind of news that we want to hear. So what we're trying to do is make sure that number one, we have all of the boom necessary that we can have in order to protect our beaches and our bays, frankly.

In addition to that, I requested additional skimmers yesterday from Admiral Thad Allen with the Coast Guard. He indicated to me that they would be attempting to get that to us as quickly as possible. We appreciate that. It's a very difficult situation to be perfectly candid with you.

CHETRY: It is. I understand you have more than 250,000 booms. You talked about requesting more skimmers, all deployed near Pensacola and Admiral Thad Allen yesterday said that as BP tries to cap the oil, it will be impossible - I mean, you told me to block all of the oil as it moves onto the coast. Are you satisfied with the resources and defenses that you have deployed right now?

CRIST: Well, satisfied is an interesting word. We would always love to have more. You know, when you love a state as much as I love Florida, and our fellow Floridians care so deeply about it, we want to do everything humanly possible to protect the state as much as we possibly can. And so you always want more.

That's why I requested another $50 million yesterday. We've already received 50. $25 million initially to try to protect and cleanup in the eventuality that the oil does come to the beach, on our shore. Another 25 million on top of that in order to market for the most of our beaches are very clean. Most of our beaches are untouched. The water is clean and tourism is so vitally important to the sunshine state, that people should continue to come.

I was on Memorial Day weekend with the first lady, and we were in Pensacola, Panama City and it was all beautiful. And the beaches were packed. Tourism amounts to over $60 billion in income a year to Florida. So it's incredibly important to us to try to do everything we can to protect our state.

CHETRY: So you talk about the beaches being clear, but that's not - an eventuality. I mean, eventually this oil is going to wash up. Just how intense it's going to be is still up in the air, how effective the skimmers and booms will be keeping most of it at bay is still a question. That is obviously going to affect tourism down the road this summer. How are you planning to deal with that?

CRIST: Well, as best we can. You know, you talked about earlier the cap going onto the top of the gusher. Hopefully that will have a positive impact. Hopefully that will be successful. We could certainly use good news around here. If that in fact does stem the tide of the flow, that's a good thing. As we go into the summer months it's very important, especially in the panhandle of Florida, such a busy time of year even more so in the winter months in south Florida and we're concerned about the loop current and how this is going to affect possibly getting into the straits of Florida and coming up the East Coast. That's why I signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency for virtually all of the state.

CHETRY: The Center for Public Integrity, it's a non-profit investigative news organization. They published an account of Coast Guard logs and they say on these logs that the Coast Guard knew within 24 hours of the explosion that the rig's blowout preventer had failed and that the well could leak as much as 8,000 a day. That was not what they are saying publicly though in the days after that. Are you confident that we're getting the full picture from the U.S. government and BP about the scope of the disaster?

CRIST: Well, we better be. I mean, I think it's been frustrating for people from the get-go. Not only in your business but mine as well. You know, transparency, accountability and honesty are incredibly important whenever you're facing any situation, particularly one as catastrophic as the one we're facing now in the Gulf of Mexico.

You want the very best information as soon as possible so that you can deal with it in the best way possible. Without accurate information, it's very hard to respond accordingly. So hopefully we're getting the very best information in an accurate way as it happens.

CHETRY: There's been a lot of anger out there and there's also been a lot of criticism about some leaders not being angry enough. Of course, President Obama addressing some of those critics yesterday. How angry are you? And is that something that is important for people to see as the governor of the state of Florida?

CRIST: Well, of course it's important for people to see. I mean, you know, this is an emotional situation. I mean, you know, state as beautiful as Florida. If you envision the concept of oil coming up on our shores and it doesn't make you angry, something is wrong with you. I mean, of course we're angry, we're frustrated, we're concerned. You know, it's very discouraging.

But I also have a responsibility to lead. And in order to be able to lead you've got to keep a cool head in order to win a hot game. This is a hot game. I'm an old quarterback and I understand that the leader has to keep their head about them at the same time.

You want to be passionate. You can't help but be passionate about Florida. But, at the same time, you've got to keep your wits about you in order to lead effectively and - and lead with honor.

CHETRY: So do you think some of the criticism of the president has been unfair? CRIST: Well, I think he's trying to do the best job he can. I mean, my goodness, you know, there's a lot going on in the world and - and the president I think is trying to focus on what's happening here as best as possible. He's going to be here later today in New Orleans. I'm going to be over there with him, with the other Gulf Coast governors.

I think that's important for him to do and I'm glad he's coming back down.

CHETRY: Governor Charlie Crist, great to talk to you this morning. Thanks so much.

CRIST: Thank you, Kiran. Great to be with you.

ROBERTS: Well, thunderstorms, heat, humidity. You put it all in a pot and you shake it up and what do you get? Travel delays. Our Reynolds Wolf coming up next with a look at your weather forecast.

It's 46 minutes after the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: A look at the Mississippi River this morning, the Mississippi River Bridge and the barge and that person walking along the southern river there, we're it's partly cloudy, 76 degrees in New Orleans right now and has been the case for the past week or so. Thunderstorms, potential high winds and a high of 85 degrees today in the Big Easy.

CHETRY: Yes, and at 49 minutes past the hour, we check in with Reynolds Wolf. That's going to be, of course, a very important place today, Reynolds, because the president's going to be there as well as some of the Gulf Coast governors, all talking about the oil spill situation. What's the weather going to be like?

REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely.

Well, it's going to be a pretty typical day in Louisiana, high temperatures going up to the mid 80s but with the high humidity and that breeze off of Lake Pontchartrain, off the Mississippi and of course the gulf, it's going to feel like it's in the 90s. Some very sticky conditions there.

(INAUDIBLE) to the north, though, up in the west half of the great lake, what we're seeing are some scattered showers, a few embedded thunderstorms at this hour. No delays yet in Chicago or Milwaukee but it's all coming as that swath of showers and storms all rolls off to the east. Nothing severe now but later on today that may all change.

It may all change also today in parts of the Gulf Coast. Take a look. Here's New Orleans, in the clear for the time being, but back out on the I-10 corridor you got this intense line of thunderstorms moving away from Houston towards New Orleans. Be prepared for that later on today. And I'll show you that we've got a fairly intense development of storms right now in the central gulf. So for everyone trying to - to keep that oil in place, keep it from spreading, you've got this big complex system of thunderstorms rolling right on through. Not expected to develop into anything big tropical, but still pretty interesting, so to speak.

And we're also going to be seeing interesting, so to speak, will be the delays in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Cleveland, Miami and San Francisco. Right now, anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, but you guys know how it goes. When the thunderstorms get stronger by the late afternoon, well, those delays tend to lengthen quite a bit. Some places, mainly here in Atlanta, may see a delay up to an hour this afternoon.

That's the latest. Let's send it back to you guys.

ROBERTS: Reynolds, thanks so much.

WOLF: You bet.

ROBERTS: This morning's top stories just minutes away now, including recall at McDonald's? Don't let your kids drink out of the new collectible Shrek glasses. Why the fast food chain says they might be toxic.

CHETRY: Twenty minutes after, to infinity and beyond. A rocket launch today gives us a closer look into the future of space travel after the shuttle. We're live at the Kennedy Space Center.

ROBERTS: And at 37 minutes after the hour, how far we've come from mystery meat. The first lady inviting some of the nation's top chefs to the White House to come up with better food for the nation's schools.

Those stories and more coming your way at the top of the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. Fifty- four minutes after the hour.

The images are just heartbreaking. Oil-soaked birds, dead sea turtles. They stir very, very powerful emotions, enough to get the White House to approve plans to build sand berms along Louisiana's coastline.

CHETRY: Some are asking, though, are berms the best idea or are they the byproduct of frustration?

Carol Costello is live in New Orleans with an AMERICAN MORNING "Gut Check". Hey, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kiran.

When President Obama comes here today, some people want him to show some anger, to take emphatic charge of the situation, like Louisiana politicians have done. They're all about emotion and getting things done, even though scientists say their ideas might not be the best ideas.

So is emotion trumping science? A "Gut Check" this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GOV. BOBBY JINDAL (R), LOUISIANA: It's incredibly frustrating. All you need to do is look at this brown pelican, our state bird.

COSTELLO (voice-over): Louisiana's governor is usually low-key, but not these days.

JINDAL: This oil, just all of a sudden, it's here. What worries us is there's a lot more oil behind it.

COSTELLO: He's fired up, emotional.

JINDAL: I don't want to see a drop of oil along Louisiana's coast.

COSTELLO: Like so many other Louisiana politicians. It's not often that any congressman cries on the Floor.

REP. CHARLIE MELANCON (D), LOUISIANA: These are America's wetlands.

COSTELLO: There is a sense of doom here, and some say politicians and their eagerness to do something are calling for solutions that may not work, like giant, six-foot-high walls of sand or sand berms. It's a concept the politicians say has been in their area contingency plan with the Corp of Engineers.

JINDAL: You wouldn't tell a drowning person give us time to do another study. You wouldn't tell a drowning person to just be patient, you would - you would help them.

COSTELLO: President Obama finally agreed under pressure, approving six berm sites.

COSTELLO (on camera): Will these - these giant sand walls really work?

MEL LANDRY (ph): There are instances where they would be of benefit.

COSTELLO (voice-over): Mel Landry (ph) studies the barrier islands and marshlands Louisiana politicians are so desperate to protect. He points to an island five miles off Grand Isle's coast. Workers here are restoring the beach, but the work gives us a picture of what it takes to build a berm.

Sand is dredged from the bottom of the gulf and pumped from a barge to the islands. You can see it gushing up on shore. That sand could be used to build a berm. Landry has mixed feelings.

LANDRY (ph): If they're trying to build a berm across the front of every barrier island where there is sensitive habitat for nesting birds, then it could have adverse impacts because these birds nest on the ground. Their nests are just little sand depressions that they're laying eggs in.

So if you roll over that with a bulldozer, you're certainly going to be impacting those nests.

COSTELLO: He adds the berms could be blown way in a hurricane and could also disrupt natural tidal flows if they're used to block gaps between barrier islands. But local politicians aren't hearing that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the only thing that can give us a fighting chance of saving South Louisiana.

COSTELLO: The berms will go up, and BP will pay the price, $360 million.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Construction on one of those berms already underway and some people say, hey, if the berms don't work perfectly, BP is footing the bill, $360 million, and at least we've done something.

We want to know what you think this morning. I mean, why do people need emotion from politicians in crises? Don't we want calm, cool heads or do we need a little emotion? Why is it so important? We want you to write into our blog this morning, cnn.com/amfix - John, Kiran.

CHETRY: All right. Carol Costello for us this morning. Thanks so much.

We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, your top stories, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)