President Obama continues his two day trip today to the Gulf region. He will be visiting coastal communities in Florida's panhandle today and is scheduled to return to Washington, DC this evening where he will deliver his first ever Oval Office address. This is Obama's fourth trip to the battered Gulf region since the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico started almost two months ago. On Monday he made his first stop in Alabama, telling citizens there that it will take a while for things to get back to normal but that he genuinely believed that the community will come out of this disaster stronger than ever.

President Obama is scheduled to meet with BP's Chairman of the Board on Wednesday in Washington for their first face-to-face meeting since the catastrophe began. BP's Chief Executive Officer, Tony Hayward, was not explicitly invited to the meeting but according to David Axelrod, a senior advisor to Obama, he is more than welcome to attend. On Thursday, Mr. Hayward is scheduled to testify in front of the House Committee on Energy in Commerce where he will face questions from one of his most ardent critics, Representative Ed Markey (D-MA).

According to documents released yesterday by a congressional panel, BP engineers made a series of cost-conscious decisions that ran counter to the advice of contractors in the days before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. One of the numerous possible examples of cost cutting measures was BP's engineers' decision on April 16th to use only six "centralizers" to stabilize the well before the cementing process instead of the 21 that were recommended by contractor Halliburton.