Logjam Moving After Miss. River Oil Spill

Tanker Hit Barge And Dumped More Than 400,000 Gallons Of Fuel, Causing Shipping Delays

(AP)  The Coast Guard reopened the Mississippi River to limited ship traffic Friday, but port officials say it will take days to clear up to 200 ships idled by a massive oil spill near New Orleans.

A 100-mile stretch of the river has been closed since Wednesday, when a barge split open in a collision with the Liberian-flagged tanker Tintomara. Roughly 419,000 gallons spilled into the fast-flowing waterway to commerce, and crews have sopped up about 11,000 - just a fraction of what the barge was carrying.

The first ship to leave the mouth of the river, the Overseas New York, is bound for refineries upriver from New Orleans, said Capt. Lincoln Stroh. The ships will move based on economic priorities, Stroh said. The Mississippi between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is dotted with oil refineries and huge grain operations.

Crews had sopped up about 9,500 gallons of oil from the fast-flowing river by early Friday, a fraction of what was stored aboard a barge that split open early Wednesday in a collision with the Liberian-flagged tanker Tintomara. The Coast Guard said Friday it will reopen the river to limited traffic, but that it could take days to get the bustling U.S. waterway back to normal.

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.

The Coast Guard said 58 vessels were stopped in the river and 97 were waiting at Southwest Pass - the narrow entrance from the Gulf of Mexico into the river. Another 37 were waiting on the Intercoastal Waterway, a shallow canal system that extends across the Gulf Coast. Forty-eight more were en route and expected to arrive over the weekend

Grain barges heading to the American heartland and a 2,000-passenger cruise ship set to dock in New Orleans Friday night were among the vessels blocked by the closure.

The shutdown could cost shippers millions of dollars in lost commerce, said John Hyatt, vice president of Irwin Brown Co., a New Orleans-based freight forwarder.

It was unclear how the bottleneck would impact the flow of refined products from the 10 petroleum plants that line the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

But crude oil imports did not appear to be affected. About 15 percent of U.S. oil imports come through the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port along the coast - the only U.S. port capable of handling the largest oil tankers. The complex is linked by pipeline to refineries.

John Hyatt, vice president of Irwin Brown Co., a New Orleans-based freight forwarder, said he expected the overall cost of commerce lost to quickly climb into the millions of dollars.

Paul Book, vice president of American Commercial Lines Inc. of Jeffersonville, Indiana, which owns the barge, said about 350 cleanup workers were deployed using 45 boats. Tens of thousands of feet of containment boom had been laid and some crews were using vacuum skimmers to clean up the oil.

State authorities were optimistic environmental damage could be contained. Divers were inspecting the barge, which is wedged against the Mississippi River bridge. Officials said they believe little fuel is left, and say they don't think it is a danger to navigation nor a hazard to the structure of the bridge.

The spill was the largest since a tanker ran aground about 40 miles south of New Orleans, dumping more than half a million gallons of crude oil on the Mississippi. That spill closed about 26 miles of the river.

Also Friday, residents sued the owners and operators of the vessels that collided, alleging in U.S. district court that they have been exposed to fumes from the fuel oil wafting off the river in the worst spill on the Mississippi since November 2000.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. Authorities say there wasn't a properly licensed pilot aboard the tugboat towing the barge.

[tngreen]

Just for the record, the weather in New Orleans on Wednesday included only a mild sprinkle of rain. Other than that, it was actually very pleasant. Sen. McCain need only have feared the New Orleans weather Wednesday if he is made out of sugar and was afraid he''d melt if he got wet.

[stevenpedigo]

There is no need for the shutting down of the Mississippi to utilize an antiquated clean up method. There is a product called Oil Spill Eater II that could have cleaned up the entire waters surface as well as the shoreline as fast as they could educt OSE II from barges, with less environmental impact, and addressed 100% of the spill. The most they will get with the antiquated mechanical clean up is about 20%, and the rest will be allowed to impact the Mississippi eco system. OSE II has cleaned up over 12ooo spills since 1989, and over 4,000 of those spills were on water spills. You can see more of OSE II at www.osei.net The U.S. EPA has tried to limit the use of OSE II for years producing a dubious track record to do so.

[randynason]

This whole barge thing is just made up to keep the oil companies from drilling!

Freakin'''' LIBS!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by Tawpdawg111

I see you freaking lapdogs have gotten your barking orders from your master. WOOF! Did they neuter you, yet?

[randynason]

So, the Captain was unliscensed? Why is that?
It goes without saying that the Repugnicans will run with this item, saying that the liberals are overstating the incident in an attempt to forestall the drilling controversy. The fact remains: drilling will not show any results until 2030 and even then, it will not drive down the current high prices. The Repugnican selling points are not true and are designed to totally mislead.

[tawpdawg111]

It''s probably just bubbling up from fissures in the earth''s crust beneath the river, like a gently babbling brook of oil.

Drill in the river HERE! (X marks the spot)

Drill in the river NOW!

Pay less at the pump!

This whole barge thing is just made up to keep the oil companies from drilling!

Freakin'' LIBS!

[xmanborg]

Well last night Katie Couric said that John McCain had canceled his trip to New Orleans and to an Oil Platform in the Gulf of Mexico because of the Weather.

That was not entirely true on NPR radio yesterday they said that John McCain canceled his trip because the OIL SPILL would not make a very good back drop for the pictures and TV shots.

I watch you every night Katie Couric at 6pm in Kansas City and I wish you would have told the entire truth abouth the oil spill and not left that detail out of your broadcast. I am all for more drilling, but I am still going to vote for OBAMA, because McCain is not running on all thrusters & he it too OLD to be President.