News of the bipartisan meeting set for Wednesday, aimed at jumpstarting Senate energy policy discussions, came just hours after Obama gave a somber debut Oval Office address on the worst environmental disaster in US history.

"The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most clean and painful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now," Obama said in his address.

"It was clear to me that he's not asking the Congress to pass another ordinary energy bill as we've done twice in last five year that hasn't really changed our dependence on foreign oil or on fossil fuel generally," independent senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut said of Obama's request.

The president is "asking for something so big that he compared it to the mobilization for World War II," Lieberman added.

Lieberman and his Democratic colleague John Kerry in May presented an energy and climate change bill that included a secondary market for pollution rights nicknamed "cap and trade."

But Obama did not address the controversial idea in his address on Tuesday.

However some Republicans have already voiced opposition to Obama's push.

"They want to seize on this horrible environmental situation in the Gulf to try to do something that has absolutely nothing... to do with getting the leak stopped and the oil cleaned up," Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell told Fox television.

"I don't think the American people are going to buy that. I can pretty confidently tell you a bipartisan majority of the Senate are not going to buy that," McConnell said.

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