WASHINGTON — As oil began washing onto Louisiana shores teeming with wildlife and weather threatened cleanup efforts, President Barack Obama today insisted that energy companies will have to employ new precautions in future offshore drilling to prevent a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster.

Dr. Erica Miller, with Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research, works to give a dose of Pepto-Bismol to a Northern Gannet bird, normally white when full grown, which is covered in oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, at a facility in Fort Jackson, La., Friday, April 30, 2010. (AP) class="Text-TextBody HoustonText" id="id2423392">“I continue to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security,” Obama said in remarks at the White House. “But I've always said it must be done responsibly, for the safety of our workers and our environment.”

Obama said he had ordered Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to conduct “a thorough review” and report back within 30 days on what safety steps can be taken to prevent accidents like the April 20 explosion at the Transocean-owned and BP-leased rig about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana.

Eleven rig workers are missing and presumed dead, and crude is leaking into the Gulf from three breaches in the pipe called a riser that once ran to the rig from the well under almost a mile of water.

Salazar, along with the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Homeland Security were visiting the region today and planned aerial tours and meetings with response teams.

Nearly 2,000 workers are trying to contain the widening spill in the Gulf, even as up to 5,000 barrels, 210,000 gallons, of oil gush from three leaks in an underwater pipe.

Despite the containment efforts and what government officials said was the removal of 20,313 barrels of crude-water mix, oil had reached Louisiana wetlands by this morning.

The National Weather Service predicted winds, high tides and waves through Sunday that could push oil deep into the inlets, ponds and lakes that line the boot of southeastern Louisiana. Seas of 6 to 7 feet were pushing tides several feet above normal toward the coast, compounded by thunderstorms expected in the area Friday.

The weather will keep crews from skimming oil off of the surface or burning it off for the next couple of days because of the weather, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara said on ABC's “Good Morning America.”

Waves may also wash over booms strung out just off shorelines to stop the oil, said Tom McKenzie, a spokesman for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is hoping booms will keep oil off the Chandeleur Islands, part of a national wildlife refuge.

Top administration officials declared that the spill would halt new drilling under Obama's proposal last month to open up parts of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, as well as the eastern Gulf of Mexico, for new oil and gas leases.

“No additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable,” White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod told “Good Morning America.”

Axelrod's comments seemed designed to tamp down a burst of outrage from environmental advocates and coastal residents, but might not have a major immediate effect on the administration's development of a plan for drilling on the outer continental shelf.

The Interior Department is at the very beginning stages of a lengthy process of implementing the president's proposal as part of a new plan governing outer continental shelf leases from 2012 through 2017.

Even without changes, no new leases under Obama's proposal would be sold until 2012 or later, and many industry leaders already expected most activity on the Atlantic could be even further in the future.

The White House's top energy adviser, Carol Browner, on Thursday noted that the announcement of a new drilling plan “is the beginning of a process, not the end of a process” and “there will be ample opportunity for public input.”

But Browner left open the possibility that the spill will affect the shape of the 2012-2017 plan, including where it might schedule leases.

“Obviously, what's occurring now will also be taken into consideration as the administration looks to how to advance that plan and what makes sense and what might need to be adjusted,” Browner said.

Environmental advocates seized on the disaster as evidence that the U.S. should immediately clamp down on offshore drilling and urged the Obama administration to go further.

“This disaster changes everything,” said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club. “This tragedy should be a wake-up call. It's time to take offshore drilling off the table for good.”

More than a dozen federal agencies and departments — including the Pentagon and Justice Department — have been tapped to assist with the recovery and monitor the spill.

Attorney General Eric Holder today said he was dispatching a team of attorneys to meet with response teams in the Gulf and “vigorously enforce the laws that protect the people who work and reside near the Gulf, the wildlife, the environment and the American taxpayers.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report