WASHINGTON: US president Barack Obama has compared the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to an environmental 9/11, as he prepares to meet top BP executives later this week.The president is making his fourth visit to the affected Gulf Coast and will address the nation from the Oval Office before sitting down with the BP executives for talks, which the White House says, will be "very frank".Obama plans to use the BP oil spill to urge Congress to pass new energy legislation.Meanwhile a Congressional investigation has found that BP took risky shortcuts in drilling the oil well, which has caused the spill.On Obama's first trip to the Gulf States of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida since the oil-spill began, he ate crab cakes and prawns and tried to encourage tourists to visit beaches, which have not yet been hit, by the slick."If people want to know what can they do to help folks down here, one of the best ways to help is to come down here and enjoy the outstanding hospitality," he said.He is now referring to the BP oil spill as an environmental version of September 11. In an interview with online news site Politico, the president said the spill has had a profound effect on the American psyche "in the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11.""I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come," he said. Obama is hinting he will use his first Oval Office address to the nation tomorrow to talk not only about the oil spill but also about the need for energy and climate legislation.But Michael Levy, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, does not think the September 11 comparison is apt."It's clear that this isn't as central to the way that Americans are thinking as terrorism was after 9/11," he said."President Bush had nearly 90 per cent approval ratings in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, which meant that he could have done, essentially, anything. "The president currently has less than 50 per cent approval rating, so the political circumstance is extremely different."I wouldn't put my money on an energy and climate bill, including a price on carbon, passing this year. But I wouldn't write it off."