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American Morning

Gulf Businesses Claim BP Slow to Compensate For Their Lost Income; Gulf Oil Disaster: Families of 11 Workers Killed Go to the White House; Who is BP's Top Guy?; Face of a Disaster; Mr. Costner Goes to Washington

Aired June 10, 2010 - 07:00   ET

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

CHETRY: Good morning. Welcome to a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING on this Thursday, it's June 10th. I'm Kiran Chetry. Good morning, John.

ROBERTS: Good morning to you, Kiran. I'm John Roberts coming to you live from New Orleans this morning. We have got a lot to tell you about coming up in the next hour.

And just ahead for you, worst-laid plans, new proof that BP wasn't prepared to deal with a disaster like this. What's the proof its, emergency contact in the event of a spill has been dead for five years. Waiting for BP to pay up Gulf residents who make money off of these waters are saying that the oil company is stalling.

Also, oil everywhere. A photographer dives into the Gulf surrounded by thick, sticky sludge, so thick that he describes its consistency as cake batter. And unlike all those pelicans and other sea birds, he got to clean himself off afterwards. All that coming up in the hour just ahead in the Most News in the Morning.

But, first, we have seen the pictures from the ocean floor for weeks. An underwater volcano of oil erupting now in its 53rd day, but you may not know what's going on at the surface to try to stop this leak. It is nothing short of incredible. It is unprecedented, it is very risky, and above all, it has to work. I saw the effort in person when I went out to ground zero, 50 miles offshore with the man in charge of this effort. BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, Doug Suttles.

An army of oil workers, many who live along the Gulf coast that they are trying to save, they are trying to hit something smaller than a basketball hoop five miles down on the very first shot. It's the closest that BP has allowed anyone to get to their operations to kill the well, and it's something that you'll only see here on CNN. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DOUG SUTTLES, COO, BP: That's the drill ship Enterprise, so that's the vessel that's right over top of the well. That's the vessel that's taking the production from the cap up to the surface. What you can see, that flare, is the gas that's with the oil that's being burned off. ROBERTS: He has flown over the scene many times but for BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles, this was his first opportunity to actually tough down on the rigs attempting to kill his runaway well.

SUTTLES: You're actually looking at something that's never been done before. In fact, we would never have thought about having this quilt this close together.

ROBERTS: We land on the development driller three, the "DD-3," a brand-new rig, seeking the first kill well deep beneath the ocean floor. Immediately, we see a stark reminder of how we got to this point.

ROBERTS (on camera): As you arrive on the development driller 3, you arrive with this safety sign, "Days without lost time injury, days without major events," and you see 52, 52 days since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank.

ROBERTS (voice-over): But we get our very first shipboard look at the first piece of good news since the disaster unfolded.

SUTTLES: First of all, you can see down in the water. I can tell you, in the days after it started, this would have been brown oil. So even though it's horrible to look at, it looks a lot better than what it looked like the first few days.

Part of it is what's happening right there. That's sitting right on top of the well. Yesterday, we got 15,000 barrels of oil up through there. If that hadn't been there, it would have been oil in the sea.

ROBERTS: It's clear that the catastrophe aboard the Deepwater Horizon has had a profound effect on this drilling crew. Brian West shows me one of his remarkable ROVs that serve as the technician's hands and eyes in the crushing depths of the ocean.

ROBERTS (on camera): What can be put on the arms?

BRIAN WEST, TECHNICIAN: Anything you can think of. We put shears, cutters, grinders.

ROBERTS (voice-over): But look on the side of the rig, there it is again, "Horizon 11."

WEST: The industry is changes because of this event.

ROBERTS (on camera): How do you think it's going to change the industry?

WEST: There are going to be a lot of safety changes, I'm sure, a lot of procedural changes. Everybody is going to be looking at drilling these wells and doing these operations totally different.

ROBERTS: One difference, there is now an ROV in the water 24/7 keeping careful watch over the blowout preventer. James Lusk is the ROV's pilot. He takes his professional assignment personally. JAMES LUSK, ROV PILOT: We all live by the coast, this area, hopefully to stop it, sir.

ROBERTS (on camera): For all of the containment domes, the siphon pipe, the top kill operation, the top cap, what you see on the Discover Enterprise is probably as good as it gets until the month of August, because the last chance for stopping that oil from coming up from the Gulf of Mexico rests here with the 889 people on board the DD-3. And to a person, they say, they are committed to making sure the job gets done.

ROBERTS (voice-over): In the driller shack, where cameras have not been allowed until now, a highly skilled crew drives a drill down 13,000 feet. They have 5,000 left to go. Their target -- a hole smaller than a dinner plate, a seemingly impossible shot. Yet tool pusher Ted Stukenborg says it's a point of pride to hit it on the first try.

TED STUKENBORG, TOOL PUSHER: It weighs on my mind, I know it weighs on a lot of people's mind, that this is something we've got to do right. We've got to do it safe. And we've got to do it the first time.

ROBERTS: The work, long hours in the searing heat for the most part has been pretty thankless. Few people are saying anything good about the oil industry at the moment. But they press on in extreme conditions to extreme depths.

STUKENBORG: I think a lot of people don't understand, they don't know. If they understood, if they knew, they probably wouldn't be as hard on us.

ROBERTS: Ted, we look forward to the day where you tell that you say the well's dead.

STUKENBORG: Me, too.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: Well, you know, it's easy in a disaster like this to demonize everything and anything dealing with the oil industry. While I would never presume myself to publicly weigh in on the debate into offshore oil exploration, I can say out on that rig, I met some very dedicated and very professional people who are working extraordinarily hard to try to fix this problem.

Let's send it back to New York to Kiran.

CHETRY: John, thanks. Other oil headlines this morning as well. With one ship filling up, BP has brought in a second ship to store all of the oil its cap is collecting from the broken well. BP says it took in about 15,000 barrels of oil yesterday or about 630,000 gallons.

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Alan said the amount could nearly double next week. And BP's live cam underwater showing the oil well still gushing. Oil's still coming out of there. In fact, it's difficult for the average person to see any difference at all with the cap in place. We will have this up on the bottom right corner of your screen throughout the morning as we continue to follow this disaster.

In the meantime the coast guard is now turning up the pressure on BP. "The New York Times" is reporting a top official sent a letter to BP's Doug Suttles that you saw with John telling the company it has three day to come up with a plan to stop every drop of oil coming out of that well.

Speaking of plans, newly released documents show that BP was not ready for this type of catastrophe. The company does have a spill response plan for the Gulf was green lighted last year by the federal government. The Associated Press did an analysis of the document. We have it with us as well.

It's 583 pages filled with stunning understatements about the dangers of an uncontrolled leak, as well as some exaggerated claims about the company's ability to deal with one. And that has Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal outraged.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. BOBBY JINDAL, (R) LOUISIANA: Look, it's obvious to everybody down in south Louisiana that they didn't have a plan. They didn't have an adequate plan to deal with this spill. And it goes back to the very beginning of this incident, whether they didn't anticipate the oil hitting the coast. From the very first day, they kept telling us, don't worry, the oil's not going to make it to the coast.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: So we want to give you a firsthand look now at BP's disaster plan for the Gulf. First of all, it lists University of Miami Professor Peter Lutz to be first contacted in the event of a spill. Well, Dr. Lutz died in 2005, four years before BP's plan was written.

The document also lists walruses, sea otters, sea lions, and seals as, quote, "sensitive biological resources in the Gulf," yet none of those animals live in the Gulf. In the event of the spill, BP lists the names and numbers of marine life specialists to contact in Louisiana, Florida, and at Texas A&M University. But many of those names and numbers are wrong.

And the BP document says that is an uncontrolled spill would have, quote, "no adverse effects on the Gulf coast because the rig is located so far out to sea." And all of this, on top of the fact that government regulators apparently agreed and signed off on this disaster plan.

Well, thousands of people who make a living off of the Gulf suddenly find themselves with no income. And they filed claims with BP. And the oil giant says it's paid out $49 million so far. They also say that another round of payments on the way will up the total to $84 million.

But for many victims of the disaster, the check not in the mail. Here's Ed Lavandera.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

EILENE BOURGEOIS, BOURGEOIS CHARTERS: We're having to fax this paperwork again and again.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's 9:00 at night and Eileen Bourgeois is angry. She's faxing another round of paperwork to the BP claims officer. She's done this over and over for 30 days, fighting for money from BP.

LAVANDERA (on camera): Do you feel like they're just dragging their feet?

EILENE BOURGEOIS: I'm not really sure exactly what they're trying to get. But I know it's a long process, and entirely too long, because next month I don't know that I'll be able to pay my house note because I'm sitting hearing with no money from BP.

LAVANDERA: Eileen and her husband own a lucrative charter business on the Louisiana bayou south of New Orleans. But the business has disappeared.

They've received the initial $5,000 check from BP, but that doesn't begin to cover what they've lost. He's had to lay off all ten of his employees. And he's estimated he's lost almost $300,000 in summer business.

But the bills keep coming. Bourgeois says it costs almost $25,000 a month just to run the fishing line. BP, he says, is moving too slow, asking for detailed financial statements dating back three years.

THEOPHILE BOURGEOIS, CHARTER FISHERMAN: Right now, everything's on the table, we're going to help you out with everything we can. It ain't working. There's no payment received on the bayou yet. The thing is, what do we do?

LAVANDERA: "What do we do?" It's a question you hear in nearly every marina and fishing village we visited. "What do we do?"

BP says it has opened up some 39,000 claims across the Gulf coast. The company says it's brought in some 531 adjusters to handle those claims. But that means each of those adjusters is handling almost 75 claims on its own. The man power simply isn't enough to keep.

BP says it's paid $48 million in claims already and vows to pay personal and business claims as long as the oil disaster keeps people out of work. THEOPHILE BOURGEOIS: We will be continuing to add people and resources as required, and we're committing the full resources of BP to make this process work for the people of Florida and the other Gulf coast states.

LAVANDERA: But it's not working for Eileen. The process is taking a stressful toll. And she worries that the charter fishing business she and her husband have built for the last 15 years might not survive the oil disaster.

EILENE BOURGEOIS: I don't want to lose my home or anything for that matter. But I know if we don't get some help soon that we'll definitely lose something.

LAVANDERA: At the Bourgeois charter fishing lodge, the lights are out for the night. These are rough times, and the hope is they'll come in tomorrow in the days and years ahead.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHETRY: It's ten minutes past the hour right now, time to get a check of other stories this morning, including our weather headlines. We've had a week of pretty severe weather in many parts of the country.

(WEATHER BREAK)

CHETRY: We head back to New Orleans right now with John. On top of the heat index that Bonnie said could be 110, a lot of those workers are wearing protective suits. And those only amplify the heat out there.

ROBERTS: And we've heard some complaints in the last couple of days here as the heat starts to bear down and cruise doing a little bit of work and taking a rest, doing a little bit of work and taking a rest.

Talking to Doug Suttles who says yesterday, hey, those are the rule this have to follow. You've got to be particularly careful, particularly wearing the hazmat suits you can get into a heatstroke environment very quickly. So they make sure they do a little work, take a rest, get fluids and get back to work.

The last thing they want to do is compound the problem with the oil by having a lot of people succumb to the heat. So they're just being very cautious with all of that.

If Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal ever decides to quit his day job, he can always be a door to door vacuum cleaner salesman. The governor and CNN's Anderson Cooper headed off into the Gulf yesterday to try out the latest oil fighting weapon.

Jindal calls it "Cajun ingenuity." The vacuums made of simple material sucking it off the ocean surface. Someone in the governor's office thought about it. Jindal had three prototypes built, tried them out yesterday, and guess what, they work. The governor is called on the federal government to approve more of them, and of course, he's going to have BP foot the bill.

Coming right up, President Obama says he's going to offer his condolences when he meets today with the families of 11 oil rig workers who were killed in the Deepwater Horizon oil explosion. We've live at the White House just ahead. It's coming up now on 15 minutes after the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Sixteen minutes after the hour. The sun just beginning to rise over New Orleans this morning. It's going to be a hot day as Bonnie Schneider said, as all those crews head back out to try to mop up the oil and take care of all the shore birds and other wildlife that have been so badly fouled by all of the oil floating around in the gulf at the back of those marshes.

Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. President Obama plans to visit the Gulf Coast again next week. It's going to be his fourth visit here since the Deepwater Horizon explosion back in April. This morning, though, the gulf oil disaster takes on a deeply personal tone when the president meets with the families of the 11 people who died.

Let's go to Suzanne Malveaux. She is live at the White House for us with an a.m. exclusive. And you know, it's easy to lose sight of that part of the tragedy, when we talk about the oil washing up on the shore. But certainly, being out on the rig yesterday, all of those workers for Transocean have never for a moment forgotten that 11 people died aboard that rig on the 20th of April.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: John, you bring up such a good point here because obviously, this is the worst environmental disaster that our country has seen. But some of the families say, look, you know, we don't want to be forgotten in all of this. We understand there's a lot of pain to go around. The president is trying to convey that as well by meeting with the families of the 11 who actually died on the oil rig explosion.

Now, John, I had a chance to actually spend some time with one of those families that's going to meet with the president, the Joneses. And what are they going to ask. Well, they want the president to help them change the law, the death in the high seas act, to help their family with benefits to help them cope after their loss.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (voice-over): 28-year-old Gordon Jones was a mud engineer on the Deepwater Horizon rig when it exploded and sank. His father, Keith, and brother Chris.

KEITH JONES, FATHER OF GORDON JONES: We don't know exactly what happened to Gordon. We're not certain exactly where Gordon was. There was mud that began shooting out of the well, which means that a blowout was about to happen.

MALVEAUX: Chris got a call shortly after the rig went down.

(on camera): When you found out what happened, that your brother was one of those who was killed on the rig, what was going on through your head and your heart?

CHRIS JONES, BROTHER OF GORDON JONES: Disbelief. After a while, I got into the car and drove down to Port Fourchon because I wasn't satisfied, number one, with what everybody was telling me.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): Gordon's family has been fighting for answers ever since, visiting Washington to testify on Capitol Hill, to get better benefits for the families of those who perished in the rig explosion. And now an invitation from President Obama to the White House.

MALVEAUX (on camera): Do you think the president has been doing enough?

K. JONES: I do. I don't know what people expect him to do, if they expect him to go down and clean pelicans. But I think that the criticism of the president that I've seen is from the public relations standpoint.

MALVEAUX (voice-over): The last memories of Gordon with his wife Michelle and son Stafford (ph) are still fresh for the family.

K. JONES: We were at the golf course. Michelle had just taken a picture of Gordon giving Stafford his first golf lesson. And I was standing right behind Michelle when she took that picture. And I remember driving away thinking they're so happy. Everything I remember about my last time with Gordon is great.

MALVEAUX: Gordon had just a couple days left on the rig before he was scheduled to take seven weeks off for the birth of his second son.

(on camera): What was that like that day where his wife delivered his son, a son that he never even saw born?

K. JONES: It was the ultimate bittersweet experience. There was the joy of delivering a healthy baby boy who, from the start, looked like Gordon. And there was the sorrow with the realization that he would never meet his dad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: Gordon's dad wants the president to know that his son had a light heart. That he loved to make people laugh and that the family is doing everything they can to help his widow Michelle support those two boys. But the bottom line here, John, is that family, when you talk to them, they just don't want the president or this country to forget what happened to those 11 men who died.

ROBERTS: Yes, and as we said, with everything else that's going on, it is easy to lose sight of that. So for the president to be honoring them today is a fitting tribute. No question about that.

Suzanne Malveaux for us at the White House this morning. Suzanne, thanks.

ROBERTS: For weeks now, we have seen BP's embattled CEO and heard more than a few verbal gaffes from him. So just who is Tony Hayward? Christine Romans will be here "Minding Your Business" coming up next. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: Beautiful shot of New Orleans this morning, but it's going up a lot. It's going to be about 110 degrees. The feels like temperature, the heat index for New Orleans today.

Well, for millions of residents along the Gulf Coast, their anger and frustration is centered on BP. And a lot of it right at its CEO, Tony Hayward. But just who is BP's top guy. Our Christine Romans is "Minding Your Business" this morning and she has a look at who Tony Hayward is, the embattled CEO of this company.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: And now, I mean, everyone in America knows who he is. Three months ago, you never even heard of Tony Hayward. He is the British boss who, on one hand, has struggled to save his company's reputation and stop a colossal oil spill. On the other, he's fending off insults from the president of the United States, President Obama. These two men have never met, but just this week, you remember the president said he'd fire Hayward for making one gaffe after the next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY HAYWARD, CEO, BP: There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know, I'd like my life back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: He'd like his life back. He also famously said it's a very big ocean, not something that went over well with people who are very concerned about the oil in that ocean. But aside from his penchant for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, what else do we know about Tony Hayward?

He grew up outside London and rose to the ranks at BP, starting at 1982 as a geologist on a rig in the North Sea. By 1997, he had made the executive committee. And in May of 2007, he became CEO of BP.

Now, the life that Hayward wants back. He earned $6 million last year. That was up substantially from the year before. That includes bonus and options. It's a nice haul, right? $6 million, but it wouldn't land him in the top 100 highly paid CEOs here in the U.S.

But his days at the top could be numbered. The odds makers across the pond put the odds that he'll make it to the end of the year at just six to four. Even worse, the company's stock price, down 16 percent just yesterday. Big concerns about the future of this company and just how much it's going to cost ultimately to the bottom line. A 14-year low for the stock. $29.20 a share, which means that since the spill started, Kiran, BP has lost half its market value. Half of its market value, for a staggering $95 billion, Kiran.

So this is a CEO clearly, clearly under pressure here. But a little more about a geologist who started on a rig, knows the oil business, $6 million a year. And clearly, he is the face of the BP disaster.

CHETRY: And do analysts think he's going to stick around?

ROMANS: Analysts think -- here's the interesting thing. Who would you replace him with? Someone who knows the company, someone who knows, you know, life on a rig and is in the middle of a crisis. Do you switch horses in the middle of crisis?

CHETRY: Right.

ROMANS: That's what the analysts are all talking about.

CHETRY: Interesting stuff. Thanks for that look, Christine.

ROMANS: Sure.

CHETRY: Well, public opinion of BP is falling as fast as its stock. John actually got to talk to the man who has become the face of this disaster, about the nationwide anger and how it feels to be one of the most hated men in America right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Right now, live pictures from the ocean floor of the oil and the gas continuing to erupt out around that top cap on top of the blowout preventer there, 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. BP is saying that it has brought on another ship to help reduce the oil that's coming on to the surface.

And it should be able to close down another one or two of the vents on the top cap and be able to capture even more of that oil. The Coast Guard now beginning to lean on BP to a greater degree to say, "hey, you got to get more of that oil up above the surface of the ocean and less coming out of the bottom there.

Top stories this morning. Oil sickness spreading. The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals is reporting 71 cases of oil-spill related illnesses yesterday. 50 of those were involved in the cleanup efforts, but 21 came from the general public. There were also 15 cases reported in Alabama.

It survived the end of reconstruction, the end of depression and great recession and Hurricane Katrina, now the oldest oyster business in America is in grave danger. Thanks to this oil spill. I spoke to the man in charge about whether the industry will ever be able to recover.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: (INAUDIBLE) are we talking about here.

AL SUNSERI, PRESIDENT & G.M., P&J OYSTERS: For myself, I'm a medium-sized oyster business, but economically, for people in the fisheries, both commercial and recreational, we're talking significant amount of economic damage.

ROBERTS: Tens of millions, hundreds of millions?

SUNSERI: Billions of dollars. And depending on how many years, you know, I'm starting to think now, years, years and years, rather than in months.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: Louisiana is the largest oyster producer in the country with as much as 40 percent of the domestic crop.

A Louisiana congressman who has been very emotional reacting to the spill in the past is now getting very frustrated. Congressman Charlie Melancon saying if BP had the tools to drill, they should have been able to clean up the spill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CHARLIE MELANCON (D), LOUISIANA: They are drilling with 21st century technology and we're trying clean up with 20th sentry technology that dog doesn't hunt.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: Congressman Melancon is also calling BP CEO Tony Hayward to step down.

And I had the rare chance to visit the Deepwater Horizon explosion site with BP's COO Doug Suttles. He has been the corporate face of this disaster making the media round several times a week, on the receiving end of some very tough questions about what BP did and is doing.

BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production Doug Suttles is a third generation oil man, following in the footsteps of his grandfather who first started working the west Texas oil fields back in the 1930s. And at this moment, he's not exactly the most popular man in America.

In an exclusive interview with Suttles aboard the rig that's drilling the first relief well, I asked him how tough the last seven weeks have been for him.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DOUG SUTTLES, BP'S COO: Well, on one side, you know, there's a lot of very proud people on this industry. You've met some of them here on this rig. And a lot of them don't believe the whole story's coming out about the level of commitment, the focus on professionalism that's done in here. And so that's tough.

But at the same time, we've got that horrible thing happening, and I appreciate it. And I think we just have to be patient. We just have to, you know, we got to get this job done. We've got to get this well killed. We've got to get that flow stopped. And with time, I think the rest of the story will come out.

ROBERTS (on camera): I know that you're not getting much sleep these days. Five hours is probably a good night. There are a lot of people out there who are saying, Doug Suttles, how do you even sleep at all?

SUTTLES: Well, you know, we all wish it never happened. But we can't undo it. So all we can actually do is the best job we can do. And you know, you can see this, this is amazing what's taking place out here. The amount of resources that have been dedicated. You know, we've got 25,000 people working every day.

ROBERTS: There has also been frustration after frustration after frustration, as you kind of shoot in the dark, trying to do something you've never done before?

SUTTLES: Well, I actually think that what people have done is taking everything they know, and at times, extended it beyond what we were capable of at the time has happened. I don't think it's shooting in the dark. But I can appreciate what people think of me.

ROBERTS: You know, the president says he doesn't fully trust BP. There are a lot of other politicians who for whatever reasons are saying they don't trust BP. There are a lot of people across the United States who probably think that you're shaving the truth to some degree to minimize your liability. To try to make things look as good as possible for the company.

SUTTLES: Well, John, you know, if you look at what we've done since the beginning. I mean, today, we were over $1.3 billion. On any given day, we spend $30 million, $40 million a day on this activity. I believe that shows our commitment to do the right thing. We didn't hide behind some (inaudible) of the law. We've been out here doing everything we can not only to stop this thing, but to clean it up and try to do it right.

It's very difficult for people to believe that right now. And I know that. But I would just ask, just give us a chance.

ROBERTS: I talked to a fellow yesterday whose got several hundred employees who's livelihoods depend on deep water drilling opening up again. The moratorium was declared, of course, because of this well blowout and he said that the way to ensure that there's no more human error as he believes happened in this case is to indict the person or persons responsible on 11 counts of murder. Is that something that you support?

SUTTLES: You know, John, what we have to figure out here is what went wrong. I think we said all along that we need to let those investigations run. We have our own running the government has multiple ones. And whatever they find is what they find and whatever outcomes come from what they are. I've all along not wanted to prejudge that. This is complicated. People are going to have to look very closely at what occurred and I know there's lots of opinions and views. But there's also a huge effort going on to figure that out. So undoubtedly, things have changed.

ROBERTS: Is it difficult for you on a personal level to get up every day and attack this problem to the best of your ability knowing at the moment, you may be one of the most disliked people in America?

SUTTLES: I'll tell you what I don't do, John, is we've got so much to do here every day. And there are really aren't enough hours in the day to do it all. And we get frustrated by the views. But at the same time, it's a horrible accident. And you know, these people are scared. They're worried. They're livelihood. Their way of life, they believe, is at risk. So I understand that anger. And what I try to do is turn that into, you know, we just got to get this job done. And that's all we can do and that's what we're going to try to do.

ROBERTS: Does this change everything with the offshore oil industry? The way you do business, your relationship with the government, safety procedures, disaster plans, response plans?

SUTTLES: Well, I think, John, it will clearly be a major deflection point for the industry. You can't have an event like this and not have that. I don't know what this analysis, what the commission will find. But undoubtedly, the way we do activity in the deep water, and what's out there, in case this were to happen again will be fundamentally different after this event.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: A question I asked Doug Suttles about the accident and if it ever happened again, if the Deepwater Horizon disaster were to repeat itself somewhere else, is there anything that they have learned that would change the response? And while they may not be able to shut off the oil, as is the case here, Suttles did tell me that the technology to deal with the potential accident has advanced more in the last seven weeks than it has in the last seven years, and that they're doing things now that they never thought they could. Kiran.

CHETRY: All right. A fascinating perspective to be able to spend that much time with him and see what it's like to deal with this disaster. John, thanks.

Well, still ahead, we're going to get another firsthand account. This is an AP journalist who dove into the gulf. There he is. He wanted to take pictures. He wanted to see what it was like to try to be an animal under water and to swim through that. Could anybody survive it? He said, all you saw were blobs of oil. He's going to share his firsthand experience diving into the oil. Still ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MUSIC PLAYING) CHETRY: Forty-two minutes past the hour. Welcome back to the most news in the morning. Now, you've seen it from the air, you've seen it on the ground. But this morning, we're getting a different look at the oil spill in the Gulf from beneath the surface. Associated Press video journalist Rich Matthews went diving off the Louisiana coast and he got a first hand underwater view of the massive slick.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICH MATTHEWS, "ASSOCIATED PRESS" VIDEO JOURNALIST (voice-over): (inaudible) here 40 miles offshore the images are heartbreaking. Oil- soaked deck blocks out almost all of the light below. Because of the darkness, I stayed just 10 to 15 feet under the surface. I could see oil in every direction as far as I could look, up and down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: Well, the AP's Rich Matthews joins us now from Venice, Louisiana. Thanks for being with us this morning.

Tell us what it was like to go under water and to be in that oil. How do you describe it?

MATTHEWS: You know, it was what you would expect. The oil was thick. It was incredibly sticky, it stuck to everything from my BC and regulator and the diving equipment I was using, my mask. I had to keep wiping it off of my mask. And that was even under water. So it was, you know, a little scary.

CHETRY: What made you want to do it in the first place and decide to go down there and try to capture what it was like under water?

MATTHEWS: You know, I've been here for a large portion of the story. And I'd been watching that underwater camera from BP spewing oil for the last 40 days or so. And I was flying over the Deepwater Horizon site, going out on boats, and, sure, we were seeing oil. But it didn't seem to me that we were seeing as much oil on the surface as I was seeing coming out of that pipe. And I wondered where it went.

CHETRY: You also were saying you wondered what it would be like to be an animal, a marine life down below. What did you see? And what would be your take-away as to whether or not animals could survive in that?

MATTHEWS: Well, you know, I mean, I knew that I could climb on to a boat and get that oil off of me. I think it's pretty safe to say that oil was so thick that any sea life that would come in contact with it wouldn't have a chance at survival, simply because they don't have the tools to clean themselves. And we did see just a couple of dead jellyfish out there and some small bait fish floating in the oil.

CHETRY: But what you were supposed to see, right, that far out is an abundance of sea life. And you described that as a little bit eerie, not being able to see any live sea life? MATTHEWS: Well, that was actually a second dive that I took along the oil rig, that was about 40 miles from the spill site. Typically, when you splash down around an oil rig, you see a lot of fish instantly. And we had to go the depth of about 30 feet before we really kind of came through a murky haze and saw the fish that we would expect to see right on the top.

CHETRY: And your description of that was that it just didn't seem right? It didn't seem normal that that's how far you have to go to find sea life, right?

MATTHEWS: Right. I mean, I'm a diver. I'm not a scientist, I'm a reporter. You know, I'm not an activist, so I don't have a -- a mission here other than -- than to, you know, just state the facts, and the bottom line was we should have seen more sea life in the first 30 feet.

I don't know why it wasn't there. I don't know if that means those fish have been killed off or if they just moved, but it was -- it was definitely strange.

CHETRY: Explain what it was like to try to get that oil off of you. I mean, we've seen the painstaking process when they try to get it off the birds, the pelicans, and how long that takes. What's it like to try to get that thick crude off of you after you got out of the water?

MATTHEWS: You know, I don't want to make light of it, but it's a lot like being a pelican. I mean, I had a guy helping me scrape as much oil off of my arms and in my face, my hair as -- as he could. We used, you know, a whole bottle of Dawn there on the boat and then, when I got back to my hotel much later that night, I still, you know, had a -- had a sense of a lot of oil on me, and I -- I wasn't completely clean from oil until about 12 hours after the dive, about 2:00, 3:00 in the morning.

CHETRY: You weren't able to wear a hazmat suit because, obviously, you wouldn't have been able to dive. They do have some of that specialized equipment, but you didn't have it on you. So you went down there without any of that on. Did you have any concerns for your own health, either from the dispersant or from the oil?

MATTHEWS: You know, my job is simple. It's to take people places that they can't go, to show them things they haven't seen. Sometimes, that job is just a little bit risky, but there are reporters and photographers for the "Associated Press" in far more dangerous positions every single day than I was in the Gulf of Mexico this week.

So, you know, my -- my exposure, I knew it was going to be short term. I wasn't incredible worried about health effects from that.

CHETRY: And do you feel anything now? Do you feel any lingering effects of -- of being in that oil?

MATTHEWS: Absolutely not. CHETRY: All right.

Well, it's an amazing vantage point that, you're right, many people would not get the chance to see. So thanks for sharing those pictures with us, Rich. We appreciate it.

MATTHEWS: No problem. Thank you for the time.

CHETRY: Sure.

Well, 47 minutes past the hour. We're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, we're talking about the severe weather, torrential downpours. Is the great weather over this week? We're going to find out, Bonnie Schneider, coming up.

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ROBERTS: Well, they're celebrating in the Windy City this morning. First time in 49 years, they're bringing back home the Stanley Cup. Game six, 4-3 victory over the Flyers. Congratulations.

And you've got some nice weather in celebration too, partly cloudy, 61 right now. It looks like it's mostly sunny, and later today, it will be mostly sunny, with a high of 75 degrees.

Meantime, here in the Gulf Coast, it's going to be another scorcher. Bonnie Schneider is checking out the weather forecast for us. We've got heat index that will be up over the century mark here and still plenty of rain in Texas today, Bonnie.

BONNIE SCHNEIDER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely, John. I bet you wish you had some of that Chicago weather down in Louisiana. And you can see why, the heat index soaring.

Now, the heat index is the way your body interprets the temperature, so across much of Southern Louisiana, while the high temperatures are in the low 90s, it will feel like it's 105 degrees in New Orleans, with the urban heat island effect, meaning the city streets tend to absorb the heat. Well, that temperature could skyrocket all the way to 105.

I want to talk -- 110, rather. Here's a look at some of the beaches that are open, mostly, certainly across Alabama, from Gulf Shores to Perdido Pass. It's important to note that the businesses are still open and if you're planning to head in that direction, we are looking at open beaches across much of Alabama and Florida, from Pensacola all the way down to Carrabelle Beach, open, open, open. So that's good to see, especially for those that have businesses in the area, restaurants and things like that.

We're also tracking severe weather across a good portion of the country. We've been watching out for strong storms to work their way across Texas, and it's not over yet. Watch out for more heavy rain to accumulate all the way from Northern Texas into Little Rock, Arkansas. Look at the heavy amounts of rain that are headed in this direction. Wow. We could see up to six inches in addition, when you start accumulating all the total rainfall across much of the region.

So this particular part of the country, the Southern Plains, will be seeing incredible amounts of rainfall. We had devastating rain in Texas yesterday, more of that ahead for today.

We'll have more on travel and a look at the rest of the forecast a little bit later on. Back to you.

ROBERTS: That was great, Bonnie. Thanks. We'll see you soon.

This morning's top stories are just minutes away now, including all the latest from the Gulf Coast to fly over ground zero where the Deepwater Horizon went down where the oil keeps coming up. An inside look at the operation that you wouldn't see anywhere else.

Also, can't live with them, can't live without them. How the Obama administration's shutdown of offshore drilling may be opening the wound in the Gulf Coast even further.

And right from the man in charge of this risky operation to collect the oil and kill the well. I talked to BP's COO, Doug Suttles, aboard the rig about the chances that it will go right, killing the well, and about what can go wrong.

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

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CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning.

The most powerful country in the world is now fumbling its way through the biggest environmental disaster in history. That assessment from actor Kevin Costner, who's testifying on Capitol Hill yesterday. The Hollywood star says that he has an invention that can combat the crude oil that's devastating the gulf, if only he can get someone to pay attention.

Here's a look with Lisa Sylvester.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Kevin Costner added some star power at a Congressional hearing. Lawmakers looking into the best way to respond to the Gulf oil spill.

Just like in the movie, "Field of Dreams," Costner decided, if you build it, they will come. As an entrepreneur, he did build it, a machine, he says, that's capable of separating oil and water.

KEVIN COSTNER, PARTNER, OCEAN THERAPY SOLUTIONS: I've been to all these oil response conventions around the country and around the world, and all I see are booms and the latest helicopter. But I've never seen one machine that deals with getting the oil out. That's me (ph).

SYLVESTER: Costner says they have centrifuge machines that are compact enough to fit on a boat. They do not use chemical or biologic agents.

He says he tried to get the oil industry and government agencies interested, but the company he financed, Ocean Therapy Solutions, had a hard time getting people to listen -- that is until the deep water oil spill.

The centrifuges are designed as a first response immediately after an oil spill. Fifty-one days into the oil spill, can it work now?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When we see all the pictures and the images of this thick crude, this thick oil, can your machines do something about that?

PAT SMITH, COO, OCEANS THERAPY SOLUTIONS: It can. In the recent tests, it just happened in the last few days, even with the dispersants and old oil, we were 99.9 percent efficient of separating oil and water.

SYLVESTER: BP has purchased 32 machines. In optimum conditions, company executives say it could treat six million gallons of water a day.

Costner says the machines can also be one tool to help make deepwater drilling safe again, that if deployed at ports, they could be a quick response in case of another emergency. Right now, production has been halted at 33 deep water rigs.

COSTNER: There are people out of work. There's a moratorium, and there is no way to lift that unless, I believe, the government feels that people can operate in a safe way. This represents that -- that pivot point.

SYLVESTER: Lisa Sylvester, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHETRY: Pretty interesting.

All right. We're going to take a quick break. Your top stories, coming up.

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