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President Obama canceled his trip to Australia, Indonesia and Guam late Thursday night as oil continued to stream into the Gulf of Mexico in what he has called the worst environmental disaster in American history.
His decision came as officials reported progress containing the oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. Obama is to visit the Gulf Friday to assess the situation and meet with officials responding to the crisis. While the White House statement offered no reason for scratching the Asia trip this time, officials in recent days had grown increasingly convinced that it was untenable for the president to leave the country for a week with the oil spill still unchecked.
Mr. Obama telephoned Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia to tell them he could not come after all, the White House said in a statement issued at midnight.
"President Obama expressed his deep regret that he has to postpone his trip to Asia that was scheduled for later this month," the statement said. "The president looked forward to rescheduling so that he can visit both countries soon."
In the Gulf, officials reported making some headway in the latest effort to place a cap over the well that would funnel at least some of the oil and gas to a ship at the surface. Earlier Thursday, 20-foot-long shears were used to snip the damaged riser pipe at the wellhead, and technicians began to lower the cap over it.
Late Thursday, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, who is commanding the federal response to the disaster, announced that the cap had been put in place, but warned that "it will be some time before we can confirm that this method will work and to what extent it will mitigate the release of oil into the environment."
Among the concerns was that the cap would not fit tightly and would allow seawater into the oil. That could lead to the formation of icelike hydrates that could block the flow. But the cap was outfitted with pipes for injecting methanol, which acts as a kind of antifreeze to prevent hydrates from forming.
Live video feeds from the sea bed appeared to show oil spewing from valves at the top of the cap, as planned. As oil gradually begins to flow up through a pipe to the drillship, these valves would be closed. "It's looking hopeful," a BP spokesman said.
Mr. Obama's decision to cancel his Asia trip underscored the way the oil spill is forcing the White House to recalibrate plans for this summer. BP and the government have given up trying to plug the leak and are focusing now on siphoning or containing it until relief wells can be completed, perhaps by August. As a result, the president faces another two months in crisis management before he can even turn his focus exclusively to cleanup and recovery.
White House officials said they will not let the focus on the oil spill detract from the rest of the president's economic, legislative and foreign agenda, pointing out that he still seems likely to sign financial regulation reform by next month, push through his Supreme Court nominee and win sanctions against Iran at the United Nations Security Council.
"The American people don't elect somebody, I think, that they don't believe can walk and chew gum at the same time," Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters earlier Thursday. "Sometimes it feels like we walk and chew gum and juggle on a unicycle all at the same time. I get that."
But, he added, "there's a whole lot of people working on a whole lot of things in the White House, and we're able to do more than several things at once."
To get through the crisis without letting it detract from the rest of the president's agenda, the White House plans to try to wall off those dealing with the spill from the rest of Mr. Obama's team, particularly John Brennan, the homeland security adviser, and Carol Browner, the energy and climate adviser. The White House is counting on a strong jobs report on Friday to reassure Americans that its programs are bolstering the economy.
Yet the president's time and energy are finite and every day devoted to the oil spill is one that he cannot focus as much of his own resources on other issues. The juggling of his schedule Friday showed the complexities in store for the White House over the next two months – the president will visit a commercial truck dealership and truck parts supplier in Maryland to highlight the jobs report in the morning, then fly to New Orleans to assess the latest efforts to combat the spill in the afternoon.
This was the second time Mr. Obama has scrubbed the trip to Australia and Indonesia. He was originally scheduled to travel there in March but canceled at the last minute to stay in Washington to lobby for passage of his health care legislation. The White House announced no date for rescheduling it again, although at a separate event on Thursday, Mr. Obama announced he will visit India in November, which would put him in the general neighborhood.
The Australia-Indonesia trip is the most prominent example so far of what will have to be sacrificed on the president's agenda as a result of the spill. While not the highest foreign policy priority, the trip was considered important by administration officials because Australia is one of America's strongest allies and because Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation. Mr. Obama also spent several years of his youth in Indonesia.
In its statement, the White House signaled that it was not abandoning its allies: "President Obama underscored his commitment to our close alliance with Australia and our deepening partnership with Indonesia. He plans to hold full bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Rudd and President Yudhoyono on the margins of the G-20 meeting in Canada." The Group of 20 major nations will be meeting in Toronto in late June.
But Mr. Obama has called the spill his "highest priority" and the White House understands it will absorb a considerable portion of the president's time this summer. The failure to stop the leak after more than six weeks has fed concern about the administration's powerlessness in the face of this crisis, and the White House has been determined to show that it is fully engaged.
Earlier on Thursday, the White House announced that it had sent a $69 million bill to BP for the first installment of clean up costs. The White House has made a point of criticizing BP lately and the Justice Department has opened criminal investigation into what caused the April 20 explosion that ultimately sank the Deepwater Horizon rig, killed 11 workers and touched off the leak.
Mr. Obama, who has also been confronted by questions about his cool public reaction, said Thursday night that he is "furious at this entire situation" but does not show it because it does not accomplish anything.
"I would love to just spend a lot of my time venting and yelling at people," he said on "Larry King Live" on CNN. "But that's not the job I was hired to do. My job is to solve this problem and ultimately this isn't about me and how angry I am. Ultimately, this is about the people down in the Gulf who are being impacted and what am I doing to make sure that they're able to salvage their way of life."
