I've got a question. Why just BP? I know Obama's position is, "BP is liable, let them fix it," but that works for fender benders. This is a bigger problem.
What on earth could be wrong with opening the gates to every oil producer, major engineering firm, (Flour, etc.), every major engineering school on the planet and saying, "We want help and solutions, what have you got?"
In big situations, bureaucrats use the frozen rabbit technique of not moving and hoping nobody notices.
This situation is compounded by the Bamster, who has never done anything in his life except talk about how somebody else should do something. Remember during the elections when he was talking about how too many Americans didn't speak French? Of course he doesn't, either, but he thinks everyone else should. He sits at his Beatles concerts and plays golf and goes to barbecues and thinks that all he needs to do is go "Ya'll fix this" and it will happen.
This is my more charitable view of the Bamster. My tinfoil hat view is that he wants America destroyed. He has no love for this country.
Well, if you want to gather the world's experts at working at a mile underwater, they're right there. As I said, virtually every deepwater submersible is presently at the Deepwater site. It would not surprise me if BP's not already contracted for another half dozen of them to be made, under the assumption that they're going to end up liable for them too.
The world's experts at undersea blowouts have already chimed in with their option: Just drop a nuke on it. Since Russia generally doesn't get hassled by Greenpeace, that is an easier solution for them. And I expect that BP's considered the nuclear option (or high explosives, etc), and was forced to dismiss it as an option. I suspect the reason for that is a great concern that all that would happen is rather than having a 20 inch hole to contend with, they'd end up with a vast area of the sea floor spewing oil. And who knows what else; tropical areas are suspected to have huge substrate deposits of frozen methane, what would happen if you actually did use a nuke on the floor of the gulf of Mexico is probably something that keeps someone awake at night.
As for engineering firms and schools - BP long ago opened the call to anyone who has a bloody good idea. They've also pretty much admitted the budget for this operation is upwards of five billion dollars. There's one big problem. This isn't something where you can cook the data like global warming, you actually have to come up with a real world solution, and there is just one effective one: Drill a relief well.