Barack Obama returns to oil-hit Gulf coast
President Barack Obama is making his third visit to the oil-hit Gulf coast where he will meet locals affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Mr Obama was being briefed in Louisiana by Adm Thad Allen, the US official leading the disaster response.
The visit came as Adm Allen reported that a new cap placed over the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico had begun to funnel oil to the surface.
Oil company BP says it could take 48 hours to know if the system is stable.
The BBC's North America editor Mark Mardell says the political fallout from the spill is growing, and the president's visit is part of efforts to combat criticism of his handling of the situation.
After landing at New Orleans airport, Mr Obama met Adm Allen for a briefing in an airport hangar, and then planned to make remarks and drive to Grand Isle, a town hit by the spill.
The visit to the Gulf comes as beaches in the key tourist area of north-west Florida saw their first major signs of oil.
'Heartbroken'
Speaking earlier on Friday, Adm Allen said rough estimates showed that 1,000 barrels a day were being captured through the containment cap.
This is only a small part of the 12,000-19,000 barrels a day believed to be leaking.
"Sometime later [on Friday] we'll probably be able to get an approximation of how much oil we are capturing," he said.
Adm Allen said that the amount should increase as BP shut off vents to capture more of the oil.
He added: "Progress is being made, but we need to caution against over-optimism."
BP says it has spent more than $1bn (£686m) so far on the operation to contain the spill and clean up the oil.
In a conference call to investors, BP chief executive Tony Hayward said it could take 48 hours before the system was optimised and a determination made on whether it had succeeded.
He said BP was "heartbroken" by the loss of life, damage to the environment and impact on people's livelihoods caused by the spill.
Eleven workers lost their lives when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, leased to BP, exploded and sank in April.
The estimates for the amount of oil that has already leaked vary widely from 20m to 45m gallons.
BP had previously made a number of unsuccessful efforts to halt the leak and accepts it may not be fully contained until relief wells now being drilled become ready in August.
Mr Hayward said BP was working hard to rebuild the trust of the American people and to ensure such an event would never happen again.
He admitted that people wanted to know the cause of the disaster.
But he said it was a complex accident caused by an "unprecedented number of failures" and "a lot remains unknown".
The company also said it would not make a decision on its next dividend payment until late July.
BBC economics correspondent Andrew Walker says if it does pay the dividend, this will go down very badly in the US, where pressure is mounting for BP to retain the cash for the clean-up.
Trip cancelled
President Obama said on Thursday that BP had already "felt his anger" over the spill and that he was "furious at this entire situation".
He has for the second time postponed a trip to Australia, Indonesia and Guam in order to deal with the crisis.
Meanwhile, the area affected by the oil slick continues to spread.
Tar balls have now begun to wash up on the beaches of Alabama and north-west Florida.
At Pensacola Beach in Florida, swimmers encountered an oil sheen and children picked up tar blobs as big as tennis balls.
BBC News
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