Ships chaos as oil spill paralyses Mississippi

Dozens of cargo ships, petrochemical tankers and smaller vessels were stacked up near a closed stretch of the Mississippi River today, after a collision between a barge and tanker spilled more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil into the busy shipping waterway.

The US Coastguard said reopening nearly 100 miles of river to ship traffic could take days, and clean-up efforts by hundreds of workers trying to remove the oily sheen could take weeks.

Many of the ships waited at the river’s Gulf of Mexico outlet to head upriver to grain and petrochemical terminals above New Orleans, one of the world’s busiest ports.

Only about 6,900 gallons of oil had been cleaned from the fast-flowing river by last night, a fraction of the oil aboard the barge that split open early on Wednesday in the collision with the Liberian-flagged tanker Tintomara.

The coastguard said 38 southbound vessels and 21 northbound vessels had been halted, a stack-up expected to grow.

Grain barges moving south from the American heartland were able to reach huge elevators at the Port of South Louisiana – upriver from New Orleans – but grain cargo ships were unable to continue out through the Gulf of Mexico.

A cruise ship due to dock in New Orleans tonight would probably be unable to do so, said Lincoln Stroh, captain of the port of New Orleans.

The 2,056-passenger Fantasy had contingency plans to dock in nearby Mobile, Alabama, if needed, said Tim Gallagher, spokesman for Carnival Cruise Lines.

Meanwhile, it was unclear how the ship stoppage would affect the flow of refined products from the 10 petroleum plants that line the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

However, imports of crude oil did not appear to be affected. About 15% of US oil imports come through the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port along the coast – the only US port capable of handling the largest oil tankers. The complex is linked by pipeline to refineries.

Meanwhile, John Hyatt, vice president of Irwin Brown, a New Orleans-based freight forwarder, said it was too early to estimate the overall costs of the shutdown. But he said he expected the tab would quickly climb into millions of dollars.

Paul Book, vice president of American Commercial Lines, of Jeffersonville, Indiana, which owns the barge, said about 350 clean-up workers deployed using 45 boats.

They initially set out about 50,000 feet of containment booms to collect the fuel oil and planned to lay down an additional 30,000 feet.

“This is a very large, very fast-moving river. It makes the job very difficult to contain the oil,” said Charlie Henry, scientific co-ordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

State authorities were optimistic environmental damage could be contained, reporting no problems from air quality tests as wildlife officials reported spotting only a few ducks and one egret coated with oil.

At the Port of New Orleans, spokesman Chris Bonura said the port stood to lose about £50,000 in fee revenues each day the river stretch remained closed.