New
York Times: Steven Chu, the Nobel Prizewinning
physicist who heads the US Department of Energy, has emerged as
the White House's lead representative in the efforts to halt
the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. As the
New York Times's John Broder reports, Chu and other
government officials have determined the nature and timing of
several key interventions. Robert Dudley, BP's lead
representative in the containment efforts, says of Chu: "He can
speak with senior executives and then with subsea engineers,
and ask probing questions about pressure variants and burst
steel casing. He can actually interpret the data and have a
very sharp engineering discussion with an expert from
BP."
