As BP's oil rolled onto the beaches of the Gulf Coast and the cash rolled into the RGA, Barbour consistently and conspicuously downplayed the significance of the BP disaster. After skipping two meetings with President Obama, he went on to argue that the Obama administration's common-sense moratorium on deepwater drilling was worse than the spill itself. And before eventually backtracking, Barbour complained that the $20 billion escrow fund BP agreed to setup "bother[ed]" him because it might cut into BP's profits.