Obama expected to boost offshore drilling oversight

Five weeks after the beginning of an oil spill in the Gulf Coast, President Obama is poised to announce strengthened, new inspections of offshore drilling on Thursday -- a heightened response that his critics say comes too late and with too little force.

Although Obama has responded to the disaster from the start, he has chosen his words carefully in criticizing BP, the oil firm in charge of the site. On Tuesday night, he said at a fundraiser in California that the government needs to "revisit how these oil companies are operating."

Obama will hold a news conference -- a rarity so far in his administration -- at the White House on Thursday morning to discuss the spill, officials said.

Apart from taking one or two questions from reporters during appearances with foreign leaders, Obama has not had a White House news conference since February, when he answered questions on health care. (He also took 20 minutes of questions at a nuclear security summit in April). Before that, Obama's last full-blown news conference in the West Wing was in the summer of 2009.

The president is scheduled to visit the coastal region on Friday, but officials said he is not expected to use the occasion to declare verbal war on BP.

Administration officials are under mounting pressure to explain why the oil company should remain in charge of a process -- stopping the oil from gushing into the Gulf, and cleaning up the environmental damage -- that, after more than a month, remains out of control. There have been mixed messages across the administration about the extent of BP's level of responsibility, and Republicans have increasingly questioned who in the White House is managing oversight of the crisis.

"The American people want to know if the administration is dithering while U.S. coastal communities are engulfed in oil," Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Tuesday during a Senate hearing on offshore drilling liability.

Obama said Tuesday night that he has told his staff to put "every bit" of energy and effort into cleaning up the oil spill, but he is also showing a greater amount of personal attentiveness to the crisis.

"When this happens on your watch, then every day you're thinking: How does this get solved," Obama told Democratic donors in San Francisco.

He is expected to discuss the disaster Thursday, after the Interior Department reports on the circumstances that led up to the spill. Obama had ordered a review.

The next day, in Louisiana, he will get an update on the oil spill response and cleanup and will meet with residents who have been personally affected by the oil gushing from a damaged undersea well head, officials said.

Democrats inside and outside the White House are clamoring for more, though. Several Democratic strategists with ties to the White House said there has been concern over how long it took the administration to convey its unhappiness with BP. "It's not easy to craft an effective message when the disaster is ongoing," one Democratic adviser said, adding that, as the situation has worsened, the demand for a more public display from Obama has grown.

Obama's last trip to the Gulf was last-minute, brief and had little lasting effect. He flew in and out of New Orleans on May 2, drove two hours to a Coast Guard station and got a briefing before taking a quick helicopter tour. He did not even see the oil slick.

This time, "we are not going to have a problem finding it," one official said.

The decision to send Obama to the Gulf was made Monday night, and was based largely on logistics, an administration official said, with Obama not wanting to disrupt the recovery effort.

The president also has a full week of travel scheduled: He flew to California on Tuesday for a fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer, and he is scheduled to travel to Chicago on Thursday night for the Memorial Day weekend. He will fly to New Orleans from Chicago on Friday.

Democratic strategist James Carville, who lives in New Orleans and has been highly critical of the administration's actions, said he is "glad" Obama is coming.

But he said the president has been too measured overall. "Eleven people are killed because of multinational corporate greed, malfeasance and possibly criminal negligence? I think Franklin Roosevelt would have jumped out of his wheelchair and run down here to be in the middle of this."