BP site says it will pay for gulf spill’s cleanup

BP says it will pay for all the cleanup costs from a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that could continue spewing crude for at least another week. The company posted a fact sheet on its website saying it takes responsibility for the response to the Deepwater Horizon spill and will pay compensation for legitimate claims for property damage, personal injury and commercial losses. “We are responsible, not for the accident, but we are responsible for the oil and for dealing with it and cleaning the situation up,” chief executive Tony Hayward said Monday on ABC’s Good Morning America. He says the equipment that failed on the rig and led to the spill belonged to owner Transocean Ltd., not BP, which operated the rig. Guy Cantwell, a Transocean spokesman, responded by reading a statement without elaborating. “We will await all the facts before drawing conclusions and we will not speculate,” he says. Meanwhile, Hayward says chemical dispersants seem to be having a significant impact keeping oil from flowing to the surface, though he did not elaborate. The update on the dispersants came as BP was preparing a system, never tried nearly a mile under water, to siphon away the geyser of crude from the sunken blown-out well. However, the plan to lower 74-ton, concrete-and-metal boxes being built to capture the oil and siphon it to a barge waiting at the surface requires at least another six-to-eight days before it can be implemented.