Oil slick approaches Florida coastline

THE giant Gulf of Mexico oil slick was last night closing in on the pristine Florida coast, as deep sea robotic submarines hit a new snag in BP’s latest bid to contain the spill.

Forecasters said it was virtually certain Florida’s panhandle, a major draw for tourists from around the world, would be hit by the spill this week.

A Florida official said the latest official projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show the slick to be about seven miles off the state’s shores.

“Within the next 72 hours it should affect our coast,” the official with Florida’s Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday.

Florida would be the fourth state hit by the oil since an April 20 explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon rig, 80km off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers. The BP-operated rig sank two days later.

More than 200 kilometres of Louisiana coast has since been contaminated by the oil, amid fears for the region’s already endangered wildlife.

With the ribbons of oil spreading, US officials have extended new fishing restrictions, with about one-third of the Gulf of Mexico now off limits.

NOAA said the ban was expanded “to capture portions of the slick moving into waters off eastern Alabama and the western tip of the Florida panhandle”.

US officials also confirmed that emulsified oil was found on Petit Bois Island in Mississippi, while tar balls and sheen were spotted 16km south of Fort Morgan, Alabama. All oyster beds and beaches around Dauphin Island, Alabama, were closed as the oil sheen approached.

BP is battling to contain the six-week spill with robotic submarines working a mile down on the sea bed to cut off the fractured pipe. But they hit a snag yesterday when a saw got stuck while trying to make second cut through the riser pipe, officials said.

The diamond wire saw being used to cleanly cut off the ruptured riser pipe at the top of a failed blow-out preventer “has become stuck,” said Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen.

After overcoming the latest problem, the next step will be to try to cap the end of the pipeline and then siphon the oil to a containment ship on surface.

But BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles acknowledged that until the cap is in place the flow of oil into the Gulf would likely increase by as much as 20%.

The US government has estimated the flow of oil before the riser was cut away at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day – meaning at least 20 million gallons have already poured into the Gulf.

BP shares were down less than 2% in European trading yesterday, after plunging 13.1% the previous session. The company has lost more than a third of its market value, or about $67 billion, since the crisis began.

The spreading slick coincided with the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season and predictions that this summer could be the stormiest since 2005, when Katrina and Rita wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast. Commercial fishing, shrimping and oyster harvests have been shut down for weeks along much of the US Gulf Coast, home to a $6.5bn seafood industry.

BP will seek to patch up its battered share price by reassuring investors the cost of cleaning up the spill is manageable and will not affect dividends, British media reported yesterday.

“If our current efforts were to fail and we have to wait for the relief wells to be drilled and had six months of clean-up, we estimate the cost at $3bn,” BP chief executive Tony Hayward told reporters.