Oil Spill in the Gulf

Oil Spill Shuts Down 19 Percent of Gulf Fishing

May 18, 2010

AP - Federal officials say they're expanding the area of the Gulf of Mexico where fishing is shut down because of a massive oil spill.

They had already shut down fishing from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle soon after an offshore oil rig exploded and sank last month. About 7 percent of federal waters were affected.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday that it's expanding the closed area, though it won't say exactly where until later in the day. Nearly 46,000 square miles, or about 19 percent of federal waters, will be shut under the expanded ban.

Dr. Jane Lubchenco of NOAA says the government will be testing fish that is caught to make sure it's safe.

According to the AFP:

The chief of the US agency monitoring the spill warned the "unprecedented and dynamic" slick was on course to sweep along the region's coastline.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) chief Jane Lubchenco told reporters the oil was "increasingly likely" to reach the powerful Gulf current that would carry it to the Florida Keys and perhaps even beyond -- if it has not already done so.

But she told lawmakers that once the oil reaches the Florida Strait -- within eight to 12 days of entering the loop current -- "it would likely be significantly weathered and degraded as well as diluted," showing up in the form of emulsified streamers and tar balls rather than fresh crude.

Experts meanwhile analyzed at least 20 tar stains found on several beaches of Florida's southern Keys to determine whether they came from the spill.

Senator Bill Nelson described the prospect of oil hitting his state of Florida and heading up the US eastern seaboard as his "worst nightmare."

The bleak warnings obscured BP's positive reports on progress in its month-long effort to contain the leak: a tube inserted into a gushing oil pipe is now sucking up about 40 percent of the crude, twice as much as on Monday.

The company said its "riser insertion tube tool" is carrying about 2,000 barrels of oil a day up to the Discoverer Enterprise drill ship on the surface via a mile-long pipe.

BP reckons about 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, of crude is spewing each day from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, although independent experts warn the flow rate could be at least 10 times as much ...

Questions of ultimate liability have raged in the wake of the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank to the sea floor. US law requires that oil firms pay up to 75 million dollars for economic damages, but the president and Democratic lawmakers have tried to raise the cap ...