I think it’s fair to call this a bad day for BP. Lightning struck a drilling ship used in their containment operations and started a fire, delaying oil processing for about five hours. Then new government estimates showed another increase in the flow rate of the oil spill, up to 35,000 – 60,000 barrels from 20,000-40,000. It turns out that the riser cut increased the flow of oil by over 50%, more than the amount of oil they are taking in through the containment dome. As if that wasn’t enough, Fitch downgraded BP’s stock and their shares fell to a new low.

This bad day sits inside a terrible week. The House Energy and Commerce Committee released some damning results to their investigation, attacking BP on their well design, centralizers, mud circulation, cement bond log, lockdown sleeve, and basically the entire operation at the Deepwater Horizon rig, including in their report this email at right calling Deepwater Horizon a “nightmare well.” See Marcy and the AP for more on this.

So how will all this new news related to BP, the size of the spill, the scope of the disaster, the failures from the outset, reflect on the President’s speech tonight? Will he go big and use the BP disaster as a pivot point to argue for a new way forward on energy and climate? Will he castigate BP and completely transform the nature of offshore drilling in America? Will he overhaul the regulatory regime and think big with a Tennessee Valley Authority-style program for the Gulf Coast?

After participating in a conference call with senior Administration officials (who spoke on background as a precondition for the briefing), I’d say the answer is “sort of.”

We know the structure of the speech, expected to last 18 minutes. The President will begin by describing what happened on April 20 with the blowout of the Deepwater Horizon rig, and the initial response to the disaster. He will update the containment strategy, and despite those new reports on the flow rate, he will outline a process for capturing “up to 90%” of the oil leaking out of the well by the end of the month.

He will update on cleanup operations with a litany of statistics on the personnel and equipment being used in the effort, including 17,000 National Guard members at the ready to be used by governors in the affected states (at the expense of the federal government). Then he will talk about how to help people in the Gulf. He will discuss his meeting with BP tomorrow, and the inauguration of an escrow fund administered by a third party (Administration officials wouldn’t say who would pick the third party). The President expects legitimate claims to be paid in a fair and timely manner. Beyond that, the President will call for a long-term plan to restore the Gulf region, designed by local communities. This falls short of a TVA for the Gulf, but not by much. Obama will call on BP to pay for environmental degredation, but it’s unclear how the Gulf restoration plan will get paid for.

Finally, the President will discuss how to ensure this will never happen again. He will not waver on the moratorium on deepwater drilling (no such moratorium exists on shallow-water drilling), but he will urge the National Commission to work on that part first so recommendations can be made. There will be action taken at the Minerals Management Service, with former prosecutor and Inspector General Michael Bromwich taking over the agency, and planning on acting “as the oil industry’s watchdof, not its partner.”

As for the larger call on energy independence, don’t expect a lot of details. The President will note that the US has had this debate for decade over clean energy, and the consequences of inaction are clear. He will point to investments already made on clean energy, but will call for the nation to “rally together… to lead to a clean energy future.” He will note that the House has passed a climate and energy bill, and that the Senate has put many ideas forward. But there doesn’t look to be a full-throated call for a price on carbon. “It will be much more in the broader sense,” said a senior Administration official. It looks like Obama will float over the top of all this and just ask for “something” rather than anything specific about capping carbon. He will promise to “work to secure passage of legislation.”

This is a mixed bag. Obama will call BP “reckless,” re-organize the agencies which really fell down on the job – that’s the biggest point of the many critical essays about the President’s response before and after the spill – and he does vow to compensate all those affected and fully restore the Gulf (a massive project). But there doesn’t seem like there will be a ton of leadership on climate change, or really even clean energy, outside of a nod to various proposals.

The 18-minute speech will start at 8:00 ET. After the speech, Robert Gibbs will take questions about it live at Whitehouse.gov.