Tar Balls From Gulf Oil Spill Wash Onto Texas Beach

Posted in Alabama Maritime News,BP British Petroleum,Deepwater Horizon,Environment,Florida Maritime News,Gulf Coast,Louisiana Maritime News,Mississippi Maritime News,Texas Maritime News on July 6, 2010

TEXAS CITY, Texas – A small number of tar balls washed onto a Texas beach, which means the spill has now affected every single Gulf state. Officials say there’s no way to tell if the tar balls came off a ship or arrived some other way.

The Associated Press reports that a “bucket’s worth of tar balls” hit the beach, measuring about five gallons. The tar washed ashore on the Bolivar Peninsula and on Galveston Island, though officials do not know where the oil originated. Five gallons is a minuscule amount compared to neighboring states, but Texas officials still insisted that BP will pay for any cleanup. Officials are looking into Hurricane Alex, local weather and Gulf ships as possible sources for the tar balls.

Affected regions now span 550 miles from east to west, ranging from Florida to Texas. Oil first reached land on April 29, and shows no sign of stopping soon.

According to The Huffington Post tar balls from the Gulf oil spill found on a Texas beach were confirmed Monday as the first evidence that gushing crude from the Deepwater Horizon well has reached all the Gulf states.

A Coast Guard official said it was possible that the oil hitched a ride on a ship and was not carried naturally by currents to the barrier islands of the eastern Texas coast, but there was no way to know for sure.

The amount discovered is tiny in comparison to what has coated beaches so far in the hardest-hit parts of the Gulf coast in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. It still provoked the quick dispatch of cleaning crews and a vow that BP will pay for the trouble.

“Any Texas shores impacted by the Deepwater spill will be cleaned up quickly and BP will be picking up the tab,” Texas Land Commissoner Jerry Patterson said in a news release.

The oil’s arrival in Texas was predicted Friday by an analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which gave a 40 percent chance of crude reaching the area.

“It was just a matter of time that some of the oil would find its way to Texas,” said Hans Graber, a marine physicist at the University of Miami and co-director of the Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing.

About five gallons of tar balls were found Saturday on the Bolivar Peninsula, northeast of Galveston, said Capt. Marcus Woodring, the Coast Guard commander for the Houston/Galveston sector. Two gallons were found Sunday on the peninsula and Galveston Island, though tests have not yet confirmed its origin.

Woodring said the consistency of the tar balls indicates it’s possible they could have been spread to Texas water by ships that have worked out in the spill. But there’s no way to confirm the way they got there.

The largest tar balls found Saturday were the size of ping-pong balls, while the ones found Sunday were the size of nickels and dimes.

Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski said he believed the tar balls were a fluke, rather than a sign of what’s to come.

“This is good news,” he said. “The water looks good. We’re cautiously optimistic this is an anomaly.”

The distance between the western reach of the tar balls in Texas and the most eastern reports of oil in Florida is about 550 miles. Oil was first spotted on land near the mouth of the Mississippi River on April 29.

The spill is reaching deeper into Louisiana. Strings of oil were seen Monday in the Rigolets, one of two waterways that connect the Gulf with Lake Pontchartrain, the large lake north of New Orleans.

“So far it’s scattered stuff showing up, mostly tar balls,” said Louisiana Office of Fisheries Assistant Secretary Randy Pausina. “It will pull out with the tide, and then show back up.”

Pausina said he expected the oil to clear the passes and move directly into the lake, taking a backdoor route to New Orleans.

The news of the spill’s reach comes at a time that most of the offshore skimming operations in the Gulf have been halted by choppy seas and high winds. A tropical system that had been lingering off Louisiana flared up Monday afternoon, bringing heavy rain and winds.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said there was a 60 percent of the storm becoming a tropical cyclone.

Sources:

REUTERS

Huffington Post

Published by maritime lawyer Gordon, Elias & Seely, LLP