Sarah Palin on BP Oil Spill: 'We Need to Keep Drilling'

May 14, 2010— -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin today said the United States should continue drilling for oil, but the Obama administration needs to hold corporations accountable for incidents like the one at BP's rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We need to keep drilling because if we don't drill for a year, we're going to be more and more reliant on foreign countries that have even less stringent environmental standards," Palin told ABC News.

Millions of gallons of oil continue to spew into the Gulf from the rig, which exploded on April 20 and killed 11 people. The rig is owned by Transocean and operated by BP.

"We have got to hold these oil companies accountable," added Palin, whose term "Drill, baby, drill" became a popular GOP slogan in the 2008 presidential campaign. "They cannot be lax at all in their preventative measures, and then our management and overseeing agencies in the federal government had better be doing their job in making sure that they're verifying everything that these oil companies are telling them."

The former GOP vice presidential candidate said Alaskans can relate to the incident in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Alaska had to go through the same thing of course that the Gulf states are going through so we learned a lot through that," she said in reference to the Exxon Valdez oil spill 1989.

Palin and President Obama may not agree on many policy issues, but the two are seemingly in consensus that domestic oil drilling should move forward.

An angry president today lashed out at executives of BP, Transocean and Halliburton, which was doing cement work at the rig, for creating a "ridiculous spectacle" on Capitol Hill. But Obama also said drilling must go on.

"Domestic oil drilling continues to be one part of an overall energy strategy that now includes more clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency than at any other time in our history," he said. "But it's absolutely essential that, going forward, we put in place every necessary safeguard and protection so that a tragedy like this oil spill does not happen again."

Palin was in Washington, D.C., to speak at a breakfast organized by Susan B. Anthony List, a political action committee for anti-abortion female candidates.

Palin, who organizers said did not take a fee for headlining the event, attempted to fire up the crowd and lashed out against what she called Democrats' and Obama's "immoral, unethical" spending spree.

It's a "generational theft," Palin said to a cheering crowd of more than 500 people.