"Officials believe most of the oil that spilled Saturday is drifting out of the channel into the Gulf of Mexico, which should limit the impact on bird habitats around Galveston Bay as well as beaches and fisheries important to tourists.

" 'This spill — I think if we keep our fingers crossed — is not going to have the negative impact that it could have had,' said Jerry Patterson, commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, the lead state agency on the response to the spill.

"The best-case scenario is for most of the slick to remain in the Gulf for at least several days and congeal into small tar balls that wash up further south on the Texas coast, where they could be picked up and removed, Patterson said."