Obama to address country from Oval Office

President Barack Obama will use the sombre setting of the Oval Office for the first time since coming to power to make a televised national address tomorrow aimed at convincing a sceptical public that he is in control of the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mr Obama will have just returned from his fourth visit to the Gulf, which was to include an overnight stay last night in Pensacola, Florida, after making stops earlier yesterday in Mississippi and Alabama. His previous three trips to the spill area were all confined to the Louisiana coast.

The activism of Mr Obama will heap further pressure on BP, which is likely this morning also to come under sharp criticism from executives of competing energy giants who will be testifying on Capitol Hill. Writing in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, the chief executive of Chevron said the BP accident on 20 April that left 11 men dead and triggered an ongoing environmental disaster was "preventable".

The British Government, meanwhile, defended the company, expressing dismay over the rise of anti-British feeling in the US. "We don't want an element of national identity to creep into this issue. BP is effectively an Anglo-American company," said Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne, in an emergency Commons statement.

"It's very important that any television viewer in the United States realises this company is going to play a very important part in the economy of the US, as well as the UK, for years to come," he said.

As the President flew south from Washington, White House officials were optimistic that BP would accede to demands made over the weekend that it place funds in an independently managed account from which money could be disbursed in future to fund compensation claims and clean-up costs.

Before leaving the capital, Mr Obama told politico.com that the BP spill would have the same kind of impact on the psyche of the American public - and on the policies of the nation's governments - that the terror attacks of 9/11 did.

"In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11," he said, "I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come."

The face-off between BP and the White House will reach a climax tomorrow when the company's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, meets Mr Obama at the White House. Mr Svanberg has criticised from within BP for his low profile during the spill, leaving most of the high-profile accident-management to chief executive Tony Hayward, who is also expected to attend the talks.

Members of Congress will try to make their own frustrations heard as several committee hearings play out this week. Among those, none will be more closely watched than the House Energy Committee hearings on Thursday when members will play to the gallery grilling Mr Hayward.

A BP spokesman said the company had submitted new plans late on Sunday night to the Coast Guard on how it will increase the amount of oil it is capturing from the ruptured well. Though details were not released, the plan is likely to be a shuffle of tankers and other equipment on the sea's surface, all designed to collect or burn off as much of the leaking oil as possible. Relief wells that should bring the spill to an end are not expected to be finished before August.

Presidents generally use the Oval Office for national broadcasts at times of war or grave national threat. Officials said the decision to use it tonight was made by Mr Obama himself. "What we're seeing in the Gulf is a catastrophe the likes of which our country has never seen," government spokesman Bill Burton said.

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