Some of the money would be raised by more than doubling the fees the government charges firms for inspecting their offshore facilities, Obama told House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi in a letter.

The total would also be made up of extra budget requests and by offsetting more expenditure on oil and gas oversight elsewhere in the budget.

The extra funds in the 2011 fiscal year budget would pay for an overhaul of the Interior Department agencies that oversee the oil and gas industry.

The previous Minerals and Management Service was criticized after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill for lax enforcement and of being too close to the industry it supervises, prompting Obama to announce an overhaul.

The proposal would bring money collected by the inspection fees the industry must pay to 45 million dollars from 20 million dollars last year.

Obama also requested nearly nine million dollars more to fund research into deep water gas and oil spill containment strategies.

An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil gushed out of the well off the coast of Louisiana after it was ruptured by an April 20 explosion aboard the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers.

It took 87 days to stem the flow of oil into the sea and hundreds of miles of coastline from Texas to Florida were sullied, killing wildlife and devastating key local industries such as tourism and fishing.

earlier related report
OPEC "must adapt" as it celebrates 50 years: El-Badri
Vienna (AFP) Sept 14, 2010 - The OPEC oil cartel needs to adapt to a world of changing energy priorities, its secretary-general Abdalla Salem El-Badri said Tuesday as the cartel celebrated its 50th anniversary.

"We face a changing world -- changing technologies, changing environment, changes in the market itself," El-Badri told journalists at the organisation's Vienna headquarters.

"OPEC must adapt itself."

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), founded on September 14, 1960, has 12 members today, who together produce over a third of the world's oil.

But it is increasingly coming up against renewable energy sources.

"We are not happy with subsidising any other source of energy," El-Badri told the press conference.

"We don't prefer countries to tax oil, tax petroleum and to use taxation to subsidise another energy. This is unacceptable for us," he added, downplaying the impact of renewable energy on the cartel's future.

Oil supplies by OPEC and non-OPEC countries were more than sufficient for the near future, he also insisted.

"We have enough reserve in our countries, we have enough reserve in the rest of the world, fossil fuel will be around for the next 50 years," he said, noting that "demand is growing."

The OPEC chief meanwhile refused to comment on a possible change in production quotas for the 12 members or a change in oil prices before the end of the year.

"A price going from 72 to 82-83 dollars is really comfortable at this time," he only said, adding that if demand rose, so would production.

Asked about Iraq's plans to lift output to 12 million barrels a day within six years from 2.5 million at present, he remained cautious, insisting he wanted to wait and see, before assessing how this might affect the cartel.

Iraq does not currently have an official quota owing to the nation's unrest.

"When I hear about 11 mbd (million barrels per day), it's a lot of oil, a lot of work, a lot of pipelines, a lot of production facilities."

"With two mbd, you already have problems," he noted.

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