A Louisiana Republican says he is infuriated that President Obama didn’t visit the Gulf Coast to mark the one-year anniversary of the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“It infuriates me that the same man who committed to ‘to stand with (us) until (we) have fully recovered from the damage that has been done’ did not spend yesterday in mourning with the residents of the Gulf Coast,” Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) said Thursday, according to The State Column.

“Yesterday the president — who wants an oil-free energy policy — had no problem fueling up Air Force One to fly across the country to do an online townhall with Facebook, which he could have done from a computer in his office or, better yet, from a computer along the Gulf Coast?” the freshman lawmaker said.

Obama started a three-day West Coast visit Wednesday, spending that day in San Francisco for a town-hall meeting and a couple of fundraisers, before heading to Reno, Nev., and Los Angeles.
Landry’s district was the most heavily affected by the disaster, which occurred when an explosion on an offshore oil-drilling rig killed 11 men and dumped 206 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf.

His district was also affected by the ensuing moratorium Obama placed on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as a response to the disaster.

That moratorium was lifted in October, but Landry said Obama should still do more to allow greater domestic energy production.

“President Obama has spent the past year working hard to end domestic energy production in the Gulf, putting thousands of Americans out of work and millions more paying nearly $5 a gallon for gasoline,” he said.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson was in the region for the anniversary and told CNN Wednesday that an environmental “Armageddon” had been averted.

“We need several years of data to ensure there is no collapse of any part of the ecosystem,” she said.

(Source: The Hill)