Spill Commission Co-Chair Still Hasn’t Talked to BP

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Former Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who was appointed almost two weeks ago by President Barack Obama to co-chair the commission on the BP oil spill, told Bloomberg Television this morning that he hasn’t actually talked to BP yet.

“The answer is no, I have not talked to anyone from BP,” said Graham.

Graham continued that he planned to “withhold judgment as to what kind of relationship we’re going to have.” He added, “I hope it will be a good one.”

Graham said that the commission plans to issue a report by the end of the year examining both the disaster and the long-term prospects for offshore drilling.

“I see this role to which the president has just assigned me as being somewhat like a juror,” said Graham. “We’re supposed to approach it with an open mind, collect the information on this particular situation and then use that as a key part of making some judgments about what we should be doing in the future. So I’m reticent to be making a judgment at the very beginning. We’ll have plenty of judgments when we get to the end of this process.”

Here’s the full video of the interview:

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