Bp

WASHINGTON -- BP has accepted criminal responsibility for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a move that it said has put the criminal part of one of the nation's worst environmental disasters in the rear-view mirror. Even if that is true, and the government has insisted that its criminal probe is ongoing, BP's troubles are far from over. On the horizon is a civil case that could cost the company billions of dollars more, as well as continuing concerns by lawmakers about how to safeguard the nation's environment and regulate a key industry.

The public-private response to the Gulf of Mexico oil leak showed more signs of strain Sunday as members of the Obama administration bashed BP's progress even as they acknowledged they had to rely on the oil giant's equipment and expertise to plug the blown-out well. In one of the harshest government condemnations of the company to date, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said BP had blown "deadline after deadline" and had not "fulfilled the mission it was supposed to fulfill." "I am angry and I am frustrated that BP has been unable to stop this oil from leaking and to stop the pollution from spreading," Salazar said at a Houston news conference.

In a sign that BP may be on the verge of subduing its uncontrolled well, oil started flowing through a containment cap into a drill ship Friday, even as President Obama chastised the company for launching a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign. As engineers gradually ramped up the flow to the ship Enterprise, cautious BP officials said it would be a day or more before they could judge how successful the cap was at containing the leak that is feeding the largest spill in U.S. history.

WASHINGTON - As a dramatic, 24-7 webcast showed oil gushing from BP's blown-out well during the spring and summer of 2010, Rep. Edward J. Markey suspected the oil giant was underestimating the amount of the spill. On Thursday, after BP agreed to pay a record $4.5 billion in penalties and fees and plead guilty to criminal misconduct, including lying to Congress to make the spill "appear less catastrophic than it was," the Massachusetts Democrat had this to say: "BP lied to me. And they lied to all Americans.

A team of top federal prosecutors and investigators has taken the first steps toward a formal criminal investigation into oil giant BP's actions before and after the drilling rig disaster off Louisiana. The investigators, who have been quietly gathering evidence in Louisiana over the last three weeks, are focusing on whether BP skirted federal safety regulations and misled the U.S. government by saying it could quickly clean up an environmental accident. The team has met with U.S. attorneys and state officials in the Gulf Coast region and has sent letters to executives of BP and Transocean Ltd., the drilling rig owner, warning them against destroying documents or other internal records.

Reporting from Washington -- Toyota Motor Corp. and Goldman Sachs were among the biggest gainers in brand image last year after a rough 2010 that saw each of them enmeshed in controversy, according to U.S. corporate brand rankings made by an online market research firm. More than 13 million product recalls in the U.S. related to sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles starting in 2009 pummeled Toyota's image in 2010, said YouGov, a British firm that tracks brand perception daily with a panel of 2.5 million people worldwide.

Federal investigators on Monday are expected to confront executives and managers of BP and rig owner Transocean Ltd. about catastrophic failures in oil well design and disabled safety systems that may have played a role in the deaths of 11 crewmen on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon. The joint U.S. Coast Guard- Interior Department investigation into the April 20 blowout has amassed a trove of testimony during three previous hearings in Louisiana and this week moves to Houston, the hub of the nation's oil and gas industry, where BP and other firms linked to the disaster have offices.

BP's long and halting effort to bring an end to the Gulf of Mexico disaster crossed a key threshold Wednesday when the company packed its ruptured well full of heavy drilling mud, wresting control more than three months after the blowout unleashed one of the world's largest oil spills. But officials were not ready to declare dead the renegade offshore well, and many in the gulf region were not about to celebrate. "We have reached a static condition in the well that allows us to have high confidence that there will be no oil leaking into the environment," retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the spill, said at a White House news briefing.

There's good money to be made by grounded fishermen hired by BP to protect the Louisiana shoreline from the massive oil sneaking toward its marshes and beaches. But just who gets the job is a source of brewing tensions. Every day, hundreds of fishermen pile onto boats to lay reels of white and orange booms. In St. Bernard Parish, a crew member can make $36 an hour and a captain can make $46, plus $650 a day for the use of their boats. And that tally makes David Palmer, a 33-year-old fisherman with three kids, hopping mad. "It's so messed up it's not even funny," said Palmer, a fisherman here whose turn to earn that money doesn't come until next month.

Obama and the spill Re "Obama calls on nation to alter its ways," June 16, and " BP will create fund to pay claims," June 17 President Obama's speech from the Oval Office on the oil spill was by far the worst speech I have ever seen during a major national crisis. But his results from paying hardball with BP's oil leases in getting money for the American victims of the oil spill now are unprecedented. The victims of the Exxon Valdez spill had to wait 20 years to receive a pittance.