President Obama made a trip to Louisiana on Sunday for a firsthand assessment of the damages and cleanup efforts of the massive oil spill in the Gulf Coast.

"We're dealing with a massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster," Obama said while in Louisiana. "And that's why the federal government has launched and coordinated an all-hands-on-deck, relentless response to this crisis from day one."

On April 20 there was a fire and explosion onboard an oil drilling rig leased from Transocean by BP (British Petroleum) called the Deepwater Horizon, which killed 11 people. While the drilling rig is equipped with a blowout preventer to shut down the wellhead in cases of emergencies, in this instance the blowout preventer failed. On April 22 the Deepwater Horizon sank.

Since the explosion, oil has continuously poured into the Gulf of Mexico. Estimates on amount of crude oil that is spilling into water vary greatly. This massive oil spill threatens the ecological integrity and the economic livelihood all effected states along the Gulf Coast - including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) was on CBS's Face the Nation this Sunday and said that, at a minimum, 7,000 barrels are leaking from the wellhead every a day and a half. Marine protection booms have been installed along the Gulf Coast to prevent as much damage as possible.

However, the immediate need is to stop the bleeding. The leaking wellhead is about a mile below the surface and robot technology is being utilized to repair or rather stop the leak. The Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of the Interior are all working with BP to help stop this crisis and prevent any further damage.

One method BP will attempt is to capture the oil with containment domes, also known as cofferdams. Essentially, this would require lowering the huge 74-ton steel domes over the top of the wellhead and pump the captured oil to a barge. But the hang up is that the domes will not be ready for six to eight days.

In the mean time, BP intends to drill a relief well as an additional method to try to stop the leaking.
"You know, from day one we've been preparing for the worst-case scenario," Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said on NBC's Meet the Press. "You're looking at potentially 90 days before you ultimately get to what is the ultimate solution here, and that's a relief well that's going to have to be drilled down three and a half miles below the ocean floor. And by the time you drill that well down, a lot of oil could spread."

Obama made it clear on Sunday that BP is responsible and will be picking up the check for cleaning up the oil spill.

"Let me be clear: BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill," Obama said. "But as president of the United States I'm going to spare no effort to respond to this crisis for as long as it continues and we will spare no resource to clean up whatever damage is caused."