Power Line has a thoughtful post on the subject. An excerpt:
So: if this account is correct, federal agencies planned to respond to a major spill in the Gulf by burning off the oil with fire booms, but after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, they discovered that they didn’t have any. (One may subsequently have been found in storage.) This criticism is seconded by a highly credible source, former NOAA oil spill coordinator Ron Gouguet, who helped write the 1994 plan:
[F]ormer National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oil spill response coordinator Ron Gouguet — who helped craft the 1994 plan — told the Press-Register that officials had pre-approval for burning. “The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away.”
Gouguet speculated that burning could have captured 95 percent of the oil as it spilled from the well.
The first test burn using a fire boom did not occur until April 28, eight days after the oil rig exploded. By that time, an enormous amount of oil had been spilled and was making its way toward land.
We don’t know enough about this yet, but I would think this is a question better addressed to Gov. Jindal and his predecessor, Gov. Blanco — and not the Obama or Bush administrations.