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Monday, June 28, 2010
G20 urges phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies
Reuters, Caren Bohan, TORONTO, Sun Jun 27, 2010 3:22pm EDT
President Obama arrives at G20 World Summit in Toronto, Canada to talk international economic reform. (AP Photo)
(Reuters) - Leaders of the world's biggest economies will pledge on Sunday to phase out subsidies for "inefficient" fossil fuels, in a statement toughened at the last minute at the urging of the United States, Group of 20 sources said.
The G20 communique in Toronto calls for the "phase out over the medium term of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption, taking into account vulnerable groups and their development needs," said the sources, who provided the language to Reuters.
The leaders also said they would review progress toward that goal at future summits. The sources said the United States had pushed to removed watered-down language from an earlier draft.
An earlier version of the statement referred to "voluntary, member-specific approaches" to getting rid of fossil fuel subsidies but made no mention of a review of the progress.
Environmentalists viewed that as a weak commitment compared with promises made at the previous G20 summit in Pittsburgh last September.
At that gathering, hosted by President Barack Obama, leaders also vowed to phase out the subsidies. They said that jettisoning them by 2020 would reduce greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming by 10 percent by 2050. The G20 had cited data from the International Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The Toronto statement revived language from Pittsburgh that called for the development of time frames and strategies to implement the phase-out of subsidies.
The communique made reference to the BP Plc oil spill on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The leaders urged the sharing of best practices to protect marine life and prevent accidents and to deal with the consequences when accidents occur.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Strong quake hits in Pacific near Solomon Islands
The Washington Post, The Associated Press ,Saturday, June 26, 2010; 2:49 AM
HONIARA, Solomon Islands -- A powerful earthquake struck underwater off the Solomon Islands, but there was no immediate word of damage and no tsunami alert was issued.
Saturday's quake had a magnitude of 6.9, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was centered 35 miles (55 kilometers) west-southwest of San Christobal in the Solomon Islands at a depth of 22 miles (35 kilometers) under the ocean's floor.
The Solomon Islands' National Disaster Council spokesman Julian Makaa said he had had no early reports of damage or injury in the wake of the temblor.
"We did feel the earthquake (in the capital) ... and people in the affected area said they felt a big earthquake," Makaa told The Associated Press by telephone from the capital, Honiara.
"We're checking by radio links and by telephone, but we haven't received any reports of damage," he said, adding that the council was "still monitoring the situation."
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said it expected no major tsunami threat from the quake.
More than 50 people were killed and thousands lost their homes in April 2007 when a magnitude 8.1 quake hit the western Solomon Islands, sending waves crashing into coastal villages.
The Solomons comprise more than 200 islands with a population of about 552,000 people. They lie on the "Ring of Fire" - an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones that stretches around the Pacific Rim and where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur.
Like much of the Pacific, the Solomons regularly experience earthquakes (AFP)
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Second-generation biofuel takes off in the Netherlands
The world's biggest facility for biomethanol production opened in the Dutch city of Delfzijl on Thursday.
It is hoped that increased use of biofuels will reduce CO2 emission from car engines. The biomass used to make the second generation biofuels is no longer based on food crops but on organic waste, removing one of the main objections to the use of biofuels.
It's in your car
Few European drivers are probably aware that they are already burning biofuels. Up to four percent of normal petrol is biofuel, in accordance with an EU directive which came into force in 2005. The proportion will be stepped up to ten percent by 2020. The biofuel does not adversely affect the engine's performance. One biofuel is methanol, a colourless alcohol-like liquid described in chemical terms as CH3OH.
Dutch plant opens
Biofuel company BioMCN converted an old chemical plant, formerly owned by Dutch chemical giant DSM, into a production facility for biomethanol, which is suitable for mixing with traditional petrol and diesel fuel. Producing 250 million litres of methanol per year, it is claimed to be the largest such plant in the world. It opened on Thursday.
"There is a lot of demand, particularly because the fuel we make is produced sustainably," the company's director, Rob Voncken, told NOS TV. BioMCN is supplying a number of major oil companies, and Mr Voncken says he expects to be able to sell as much fuel as the plant can produce. Conveniently situated in the northern seaport city of Delfzijl, the produce can be shipped directly from the factory area to customers.
Peanut butter
The raw material for the process consists of organic waste, left after the manufacture of products such as soap and peanut butter. This contributes significantly to the biofuel's sustainability.
Energy researcher Sascha Kersten of Twente University explains that the Netherlands is well-placed for the biofuels industry: "The Netherlands has a big seaport [Rotterdam] which facilitates the import of the raw materials. We're good at refineries, we're good at logistics. These factors increase our chances of success in the biofuel market of the future."
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Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Kiss the Grid Goodbye: Power Your Home with a Bloom Box!
Greenopolis
Fuel cells have been a tantilizing technolgy for decades - powering space vehicles, but always a little out of reach for domestic or commercial use. I worked with Greenopolis Partner Plug Power for years - working to provide clean on site energy from hydrogen powered fuel cells. Now there’s the Bloom Box.
That’s not a typo for a new carry-on-your shoulder stereo system. The Bloom Box is a refrigerator-sized box that can power your whole house, store or business.
Bloom Energy is a venture capital funded firm that builds the “Bloom Box”- an appliance sized unit that houses fuel cells running on natural gas, landfill gas, bio-gas or solar power. Fuel cells combine hydrogen with oxygen and emit only heat, electricity and distilled water.
Google has been powering a datacenter with 4 Bloom Boxes running on natural gas for the past year and a half. eBay has 5 of them in San Jose, which they claim have saved them $100,000 in energy costs over the past 9 months.
The Bloom Box debuted on CBS’ 60 Minutes last night.
Is the fuel cell promise finally coming true? Is there a box in your future? Stay tuned, and keep your ear glued to the Bloom Box.
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The Earth as a weapon in 21st Century of Wars
twnside.org.sg, by Rahab S Hawa
While scientists, governments and concerned groups worry about increased industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and its effects on the planet, the role of the military in climate change has been ignored.
‘When environmental crises occur, it is usually only the civilian economy that is called upon to rectify the balance, while military programmes are rarely taken to task,’ says Dr Rosalie Bertell, renowned scientist and nuclear activist.
According to her, the military has got away scot-free from responsibility for polluting the environment and ecological disasters.
In her path-breaking book titled ‘Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War’ (2000), she cited examples from the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and the NATO bombing in Kosovo.
These wars have not only destroyed lives and property, they have contaminated large areas of land for years to come.
According to Dr. Bertell, the hundreds of burning oil fires during the Gulf War was the ‘worst man-made pollution event in history’. It led to environmental and climatic disasters worldwide.
Scientists worldwide predicted fiercer monsoons due to greater warming, acid rain, forceful storms and severe flooding all over the globe.
‘In time...a huge typhoon struck Bangladesh on 1 May, killing more than 100,000 people...Soviet scientists reported very high levels of acid rain in Southern Russia. Satellite images showed smoke and darkened snow in Pakistan and northern India,’ she said.
‘Astronauts [on] the space shuttle Atlantis reported so much haze shrouding the Earth. ...Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences claimed that dense clouds from the Gulf War were also responsible for the disastrous floods which took place in their country,’ Dr. Bertell recalls in her book.
Heavy storms were reported over Eastern Europe. ‘There was severe flooding from Bavaria to Czechoslovakia with several deaths, destruction of farmlands, and bridges washed away. Rail lines throughout Austria were submerged and the Danube River reached record heights,’ she added.
In both the Gulf War and in Kosovo, depleted uranium ordnance was used by the US and NATO forces on a large scale. This has led to contamination of land, air and water with long-term effects on human health: just as in Vietnam, where the US military deliberately targeted the environment and destroyed and contaminated millions of acres of land with ‘Agent Orange’ and other toxic chemicals.
But this devastation pales in comparison to the havoc that the military is now capable of wreaking on planet earth.
The vast experiments that the military, especially the US, have been conducting over the decades involving experiments with the ozone layer, manipulation of the weather and use of wave technology to probe inside earth itself, is in preparation for wars that will be launched in the 21st century.
These atmospheric experiments and research ‘are not just about exciting scientific exploration. Space is the next battlefield’, meaning that the military is taking war into space. They are ‘going to fight in space,’ she quotes.
‘Because of the secrecy shielding military research, it is not always easy for the public to understand the possible consequences’, Dr Bertell says.
Beginning in 1946 in the Pacific, nuclear atmospheric testing by the US and later, the Soviet Union and the UK, have seriously damaged the environment.
According to Dr. Bertell, ‘the 300 megatons of nuclear explosions between 1945 and 1963 had depleted the ozone layer by about 4%’.
Although the first ozone hole had begun to heal in the 1980s, in 1986, civilian scientists established the existence of a second ozone hole in the Antarctic.
‘Scientists have estimated that a 1% loss of ozone would result in 1-3% more ultra-violet radiation reaching the Earth,’ she writes. ‘This would increase the skin cancer rate and affect all life forms,’ she added.
In the 1990s, US military experiments with nuclear-powered rockets increased and the launching of plutonium into space became a routine activity.
These nuclear-powered space missions were highly dangerous as plutonium could be dispersed over large areas of the earth in an accident.
According to Dr. Bertell, the first major space accident seriously affecting Earth took place in April 1964 when the US rocket SNAP-9A was aborted and the 17,000 curies of plutonium it was carrying scattered over the globe. The plutonium is still detectable in soil and the bones of people and animals.
‘In 1997, there were two SNAP-9A rockets in orbit - each carrying 17,000 curies of plutonium and each planning on [the] completion of their mission to disperse the plutonium as the 1964 rocket had done,’ she warns.
Because of the secrecy surrounding these space plans, the public are not aware of the dangers involved in these projects especially when ‘the history of the space programme is littered with disasters’.
The weapons of war in the new millennium would involve the use of planet earth itself as a weapon, harnessing the power of natural processes for war.
At the Peoples’ Health Assembly in December 2000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dr. Bertell revealed to a shocked and incredulous audience that ‘the latest weapons in the arsenal of the US military is Planet Earth itself ... and weather will be one of the worst destructive weapons by the year 2025’.
Dr. Bertell was referring to how engineered earthquakes and tornadoes could wreak havoc on populations and nations.
According to her book, electromagnetic weapons ‘have the ability to transmit explosive and other effects such as earthquake induction across intercontinental distances to any selected target site on the globe with force levels equivalent to major nuclear explosions’.
For the past 40 years, the US military has conducted experiments on the earth’s atmosphere using waves and chemicals.
Attempts to gain control of the weather, through environmental engineering with experiments involving laser and chemicals to ascertain whether they could damage the ozone layer over an enemy; cause damage to crops and human health through exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, have been carried out by the military.
Chemicals like barium and lithium have been released above the ozone layer creating spectacular light displays and glowing artificial clouds, which were seen in North America during the 1980s and early 1990s.
These compounds are most destructive of the ‘ozone layer’ and cause further chemical changes to the earth’s atmosphere.
According to Dr. Bertell, ‘changes in the earth’s atmosphere bring about corresponding changes in the Earth’s weather and climate’.
Another method is the use of very low frequency electromagnetic waves in weather modification experiments. These waves can pass through solid earth and oceans and have been used by the military to probe the upper atmosphere and the inner structure of the earth.
These pulsed, extremely low frequency (ELF) waves, for instance, can be used to convey mechanical effects and vibrations at great distances through the Earth. They can manipulate the weather, creating storms and torrential rains over an area.
These waves have the potential to generate earth movements. ‘It has the capability to cause disturbance of volcanoes and tectonic plates, which in turn, have an effect on the weather,’ she states.
For example, earthquakes are known to interact with the ionosphere (the atmosphere 50-373 miles above the earth’s surface). In fact, many of the earthquakes that occurred in recent years were preceded by certain unexplained phenomena, says Dr. Bertell.
Some of the examples in her book include the Tang Shan earthquake in China, which occurred on 28 July 1976, and left 650,000 people dead. The catastrophic event was preceded by an airglow, said to have been caused by Soviet ELF wave experiments to heat the ionosphere.
The other was the San Francisco earthquake. According to Dr. Bertell, unusual ultra low frequency waves were detected in California on 12 September 1989. These waves grew in intensity and finally subsided on 5 October. On 17 October, they appeared again with signals so strong that they went off the scale. Three hours later, the earthquake took place.
In fact, a Washington Times report in March 1992 said, satellites and ground sensors detected mysterious radio waves or related electrical and magnetic activity before major earthquakes in Southern California, Armenia, Japan and Northern California between 1986 and 1989.
The earthquake that hit Los Angeles on 17 January 1994 was also preceded by unusual radio waves and two sonic booms.
‘These strange coincidences have never been explained ... it seems highly probable that some of these earthquakes have been a result of human activity, not natural forces,’ said Dr. Bertell.
Tellingly, the US Secretary of Defence, in 1997, commented on new threats posed by terrorist organizations ‘engaging in eco-type terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, and volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves’.
‘The military has a habit of accusing others of having capabilities they already hold,’ said Dr. Bertell in response.
These experiments by the military on the earth’s atmosphere have seen an increase in freak weather throughout the globe, says Dr. Bertell.
‘Between the 1960s and the 1990s, major natural disaster rates have increased by a factor of 10,’ she adds.
According to her, the EL Nino in 1997-98, which was blamed for abnormal weather conditions worldwide, was actually preceded by violent disruptions and climatic destabilisation a year earlier.
In 1996, Dr. Bertell described the severe flooding that occurred in the Indian subcontinent affecting Nepal, India and Bangladesh in which millions were left homeless. In China, floods killed hundreds while tens of thousands had their homes and property destroyed.
At the same time, Canada was hit by torrential rains, flooding, tornadoes, hail and thunderstorms - all very abnormal climatic conditions destroying property, livestock and lives.
Heavy snowfall, not seen in decades, appeared in South Africa, cutting off food supplies and taking lives due to the extreme cold.
During the week ending 19th July, earthquakes rocked the French Alps, Austria, Southern Italy, Northeast India, Japan, Indonesia, the Kamchatka peninsular, and Southern Mexico. In New Zealand, a volcano erupted.
Tremors were reported in Kenya, Germany, the Greek Islands, Turkey, northern Sumatra, Bali, the central Philippines, New Zealand’s North Island, eastern Japan, central Chile, El Salvador and the Alentian Islands, all within the week ending 26 July, she reported.
According to her, ‘While some of the events of 1996 may have been ‘acts of God’, certainly, the overall volume and ferocity was anything but normal’.
‘Because of the intimate connection between the Earth’s atmosphere and its weather, it is not surprising to find that military activities have had an impact on local and regional weather patterns,’ she writes.
The fact that military activities can cause freak weather by accident as well as deliberately as part of geophysical warfare, is indeed a frightening prospect for the planet.
More so, when we know so little about ‘the natural cycles of Earth and the impact of human activities on it to make good predictions of what will happen when human activities interfere with them,’ she says.
‘Moreover, such predictions are based on the natural history of our planet and are meaningless in the face of random experimentation on major Earth systems in the upper atmosphere and the bowels of the planet,’ she adds.
Clearly, ‘the military is also contributing to some of the most intractable survival problems of the twenty-first century,’ she notes.
Study finds synchronicity in earthquakes
UPI.com, June 22, 2010 at 2:15 PM
NEW YORK, June 22 (UPI) -- A U.S. seismologist says he's determined earthquakes can occur in synchrony, with big quakes triggering other big quakes along the same fault.
Columbia University Professor Christopher Scholz, a seismologist at the school's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, says in nature, random signals often fall mysteriously in step -- fireflies flashing sporadically in early evening soon flash together, and the same harmonic behavior can be seen in chirping crickets, firing neurons, swinging clock pendulums and now, rupturing earthquake faults.
Scholz says when a fault breaks it might sometimes gently prod a neighboring fault also on the verge of fracturing. He finds evidence for synchronized, or "phase locked," faults in southern California's Mojave Desert, the mountains of central Nevada and the south of Iceland.
He identifies strings of related earthquakes, and explains the physics of how faults, separated by up to more than 30 miles and rupturing every few thousand years, might align themselves to rupture nearly simultaneously.
"All of a sudden bang, bang, bang, a whole bunch of faults break at the same time," Scholz said. "Now that we know that some faults may act in consort, our basic concept of seismic hazard changes. When a large earthquake happens, it may no longer mean that the immediate future risk is lower, but higher."
He details his findings in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
More than 1,000 missing in Brazil's floods
English.news.cn 2010-06-22 09:10:31
This photo released by the Brazilian state of Alagoas government, shows an aerial view of a flooded area of Jacuipe, in northeastern Alagoas state, Brazil, Monday, June 21, 2010. Officials said floods and mudslides have now killed at least 31 people in northeastern Brazil. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)
RIO DE JANEIRO, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Over 1,000 people are unaccounted for in the aftermath of the floods that hit Brazil's northeastern region during the past few days, officials said on Monday.
The disaster has already claimed at least 32 lives in the states of Pernambuco and Alagoas, and that number will continue to rise based on the number of the missing persons, according to local Civil Defense services.
The situation took a turn for the worse after a dam in the Pernambuco state broke down, causing the Mumbau River to overflow and flood several towns.
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Looks Like UFO Alien Abductees Are Right About Our Unfolding Future
Before it News, Contributed by Grant Lawrence (Reporter) , Sat Jun 19 2010 02:38
Harvard Professor John Mack, a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst, was intrigued by the number of cases in which he found clients reporting alien abductions. Of course, many people suffering from some form of psychosis might say that they were encountering Aliens. But what Dr. Mack found was that these people reporting abductions were not insane. They were coherent, rational, and functioned normally except that some reported stress and an overwhelming fear of the abductions.
Obviously, people can and do lie about their abduction experience in order to gain attention. But Dr. Mack reported,"I've now worked with over a hundred experiencers intensively. Which involves an initial two-hour or so screening interview before I do anything else. And in case after case after case, I've been impressed with the consistency of the story, the sincerity with which people tell their stories, the power of feelings connected with this, the self-doubt—all the appropriate responses that these people have to their experiences."
Dr. Mack is, unfortunately, no longer with us. He was killed in an auto accident in England while attending a conference.
But the story doesn't end there.
Dr. Mack found that the alien abductees generally reported similar reasons for the abductions and an unsettling prediction for humanity.
"....Now, the effect of that is—or what seems to be going on there, in a number of abductees—not just people I see, but the ones Budd Hopkins and other people see—is to produce some kind of new species to bring us together to produce a hybrid species which—the abductees are sometimes told—will populate the earth or will be there to carry evolution forward, after the human race has completed what it is now doing, namely the destruction of the earth as a living system. So it's a kind of later form. It's an awkward coming together of a less embodied species than we are, and us, for this evolutionary purpose.
However, that might not be literally true. It might be that that this is a communication to us. That perhaps we need to change our ways. It may not be that these are literally our babies. It may be a kind of expression of images of babies; or it may be that these hybrids we're told is what will have to be. It's a kind of insurance policy if the earth continues to be subjected to the exploitation of its living environment to the point where it can't sustain human and other life as it's now occurring. But it may not be literally what is going to happen. So that's one area...."(source pbs.org)
Dr.Mack also says that there is a general theme of the abductees being shown screens of environmental catastrophes. He says they report that even the spirits that live in the same environment that we do will have be displaced.
The cause of all of this future misfortune as reported by the abductees, according to Dr. Mack, will be too much environmental stress caused by pollution and human activities.
The abductees told Dr. Mack that the ETs were sure it was going to happen. So the Aliens started creating a hybrid race for after the eco-collapse.
Sure it is interesting that the claimed abductees reported the threat of eco-collapse over the last several decades. But we didn't have to be abducted to know that something has been going terribly wrong for quite awhile. Many, myself included, have indeed warned that we need a drastic and a serious change in the way we have been living. For me and others, the first step to a solution to the environmental nightmare that we were building had to be for people to come to some understanding of the interconnectedness of life and the consequences of their actions.
Perhaps now we have indeed approached the point of no return to that human extinction event reportedly warned by the Aliens.
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Egypt oil spill threatens Red Sea marine life
Yahoo/AFP, Sun Jun 20, 10:39 am ET
 |
| AFP/File - A sea turtle swims with scuba divers in the Ras Mohammed protection area near Sham el-Sheikh Egypt |
CAIRO (AFP) – An oil spill off the Egyptian Red Sea coast of Hurghada threatening to damage marine life in the area has promptedenvironmental agencies to demand tighter regulation of offshore oil platforms.
Large quantities of oil have appeared in recent days around the resorts of Hurghada which draw millions of tourists who come to dive or snorkle, according to the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Agency.
"It started four or five days ago and the companies responsible didn't notify anyone. It is catastrophic," HEPCA Managing Director Amr Ali told AFP.
The spill was caused by leakage from an offshore oil platform north of Hurghada and has polluted protected areas and showed up on tourist beach resorts.
"The companies have said they will pay damages, but it is the environmental damage that we are concerned about," Ali said, declining to name the companies for legal reasons.
"We will take all measures, including legal, to make sure this does not happen again," he said.
HEPCA's warning comes amid ongoing efforts to contain the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which has already damaged fragile ecosystems along the US south coast and halted the region's multi-billion-dollar fishing industry.
HEPCA, a non-governmental organisation based in Hurghada, has been working for the protection of natural resources in the Red Sea.
Egypt's environment and tourism ministries said the oil spill was contained and that measures were being taken to "deal with the pollution caused by the spill," the official MENA news agency reported.
Authorities protective of the lucrative tourism industry were eager to resolve the matter quickly. Both the Environment Minister Maged George and Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy visited the area of the spill on Saturday.
But HEPCA says it was too little too late.
"Visits won't help. We would like to see a clearer plan of action on the ground," Ali said.
"We would also like to see more stringent standards imposed on these offshore platforms to ensure naturalareas are protected," he said.
Residents have been told to stay away from contaminated beaches
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Sunday, June 20, 2010
BP agrees to $20 billion fund for spill costs
CNN Money, by Ben Rooney, staff reporterJune 16, 2010: 3:46 PM ET
President Obama meeting with BP executives Wednesday.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- BP has agreed to put $20 billion into an independently managed account to cover economic damages related to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama said Wednesday.
Obama announced the agreement after meeting with BP executives at the White House. Chief executive Tony Hayward and chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, were among the execs there to discuss the spill, which has become the worst environmental disaster in US history.
But the fund will not limit the amount BP is responsible to pay, and it will not block states or individuals from pursuing claims in court, the president said.
Kenneth Feinberg, an attorney who served as Special Master of the 9/11 victims compensation fund, will oversee the fund, which will not be controlled by the government or BP.
Obama said he is "absolutely confident" that BP will be able to meet its obligations and that the agreement "sets up a legal and financial frame work for them to do it."
The fund, he said, "will provide substantial assurance that the claims people and businesses have will be honored."
BP (BP) has said repeatedly that it plans to pay all costs related to the spill. But the company has been criticized for not moving fast enough to process claims of economic damage filed by Gulf businesses impacted by the disaster.
Carl-Henric Svanberg, the chairman of BP, said after the meeting that the company will not make any dividend payments for the remainder of the year.
BP had been under intense political pressure to suspend its dividend, which totaled $10.5 billion last year, before the costs of the spill were known.
In addition, BP agreed to set aside $100 million to compensate oil workers idled by the government-imposed moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Svanberg reiterated that the company will "live up to all our legitimate responsibilities," adding that the deal "should assure the American people that we mean what we say."
He also took the opportunity to apologize on behalf of the company and its employees.
Obama said the liabilities BP faces are "significant." But he called the company "strong" and "viable," adding that nation has an interest in keeping it above water.
While the new framework is an important step in repairing the economic and environmental damage in the Gulf, Obama acknowledged that "we're not going to turn things around overnight."
Under the terms of the agreement, BP will make installments of $5 billion a year for four years, including $5 billion in 2010, according to a White House fact sheet. BP will provide "assurance" for these commitments by setting aside $20 billion in U.S. assets.
As of March, BP had about $7 billion in cash on hand, according to its quarterly financial statement. The company generates over $7 billion in cash each quarter, or about $30 billion per year.
In addition, analysts estimate that BP could comfortably borrow up to $17 billion on relatively short notice.
BP said last week that it has so far spent over $1 billion on containment, clean up and other costs related to the spill.
Analysts say it's too soon to say how much the spill could end up costing BP, but estimates have ranged between $11 billion and $60 billion on the low end, to upwards of $100 billion in the worst case.
Much depends on the amount of oil flowing from the well and whether BP is found guilty of gross negligence.
Reports from congressional committees and in the press have indicated BP chose cheaper, riskier drilling tactics in the lead-up to the disaster.
Meanwhile, government scientists on Tuesday increased their estimate of oil flowing into the Gulf by 50% to between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. That translates into 1.5 million gallons to 2.5 million gallons per day.
Wednesday was the 58th day that oil has been spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.
Documents released by a Senate committee Wednesday show that BP has already given some money to the government for spill-related costs.
BP transferred about $71 million in two separate transactions last week to the Coast Guard for clean up costs, according to the documents.
-- CNN's John King, Suzanne Malveaux and Evan Glass contributed to this report.
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