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The White House deliberately blocked estimates on the size of the potential environmental damage caused by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a report released yesterday declared.

The White House deliberately blocked estimates on the size of the potential environmental damage caused by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a report released yesterday declared.The investigation by the National Oil Spill Commission said U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration had been over-optimistic about BP's ability to deal with the huge spill and action could have been taken earlier to minimise the disaster.

Eleven people were killed when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, leading to the worst offshore oil leak in U.S. history with hundreds of miles of shoreline polluted.

Damaging: The White House has been accused of deliberately blocking estimates on the potential damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

On the White House's response to the disaster, the official report declared: 'For the first ten days of the spill, it appears that a sense of over-optimism affected responders.

'Responders almost uniformly noted that, while they understood that they were facing a major spill, they believed that BP would get the well under control.

Disaster: The spill was the worst offshore oil leak in U.S. history with hundreds of miles of shoreline polluted

Though some of the command structure was put in place very quickly, in other respects the mobilization of resources to combat the spill seemed to lag.'

The panel, whose members were appointed by President Obama, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had also wanted to release some of its worst-case spill models on the accident in late April or early May, but the White House Office of Management and Budget blocked the move to make the information public.

The White House decision to block the estimates came as BP was being heavily criticised for failing to provide accurate information on the amount of oil that was leaking.The report singled out White House energy adviser Carol Browner for particular criticism after she appeared on television on August 4 and declared: 'The vast majority of the oil was gone'.

Troubling: President Barack Obama (pictured) and his administration have been criticised for the their handling of the crisis

She was accused of overstating the findings of a NOAA analysis of the fate of the oil.

'By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem,' the report declared.

Some five million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon spill.BP was continually criticised for three months as pollution pumped into the sea, with the oil company's stock falling by over 50 per cent on the New York Stock Exchange at the height of the disaster.

CEO Tony Hayward also announced his resignation following the spill, with BP declaring it had lost $30 billion (£19 billion) as a result of the rig explosion. Print this post