http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-president-obama-names-panel-to-head-national-investigation-.htmlWith frustration growing over the unplugged oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama on Friday appointed a bipartisan panel to figure out the root causes of the disaster and recommend ways to prevent something like it in the future.
A former Florida governor and senator, Bob Graham, will join former Environmental Protection Agency director William K. Reilly as co-chairman of the commission, charged with studying how better regulation could stop accidents like the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Obama is asking the seven-member commission to study the causes of the spill and issue a report within six months suggesting improvements. The president is expected to officially announce the creation of the commission as early as Saturday, an administration official confirmed late Friday.
The move comes a month after BP's drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana exploded, killing eleven people and bursting an underwater pipe. Since then, thousands of barrels of oil have spewed into the gulf daily in an environmental disaster of untold proportions. The company and outside experts are working frantically to try to plug the leak, as government officials grow increasingly agitated about the lack of success and its impact on small businesses and communities in the region.
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