— Until Monday, New Orleans had escaped direct effects from the oil disaster spreading across the Gulf Coast.
That delicate balance changed when balls of tar were found in the Rigolets, one of two passes that connect Lake Pontchartrain with the Gulf of Mexico.
“So far it’s scattered stuff showing up, mostly tar balls,” said Office of Fisheries Assistant Secretary Randy Pausina. “It will pull out with the tide, and the 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.
— Documents show federal regulators concluded offshore oil drilling posed a low risk to endangered wildlife. The conclusion is at odds with scenes of pelicans fighting to survive the massive Gulf oil spill.
A September 2007 memo from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said large oil spills from Gulf drilling projects are “low-probability events” that weren’t likely to affect brown pelicans, sea turtles and other endangered species at the time.
The memo, first reported by The New York Times, concluded that the chance of oil from an offshore spill of at least 1,000 barrels reaching endangered species or their habitats was no greater than 26 percent.
—As BP PLC’s costs for the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill climb to just over $3 billion, the British oil giant is billing partners Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Japan’s Mitsui for their shares of the cleanup.
BP has billed Anadarko, a 25-percent stakeholder in the blown-out well, for more than a quarter billion dollars so far. It also has reportedly billed Mitsui, a 10-percent partner, for $111 million.
“They are partners in the field, and as responsible partners we would expect them to bear some of the costs,” BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams said Monday.
TEXAS CITY, Texas (AP) — A Texas official said Monday that tar balls from the Gulf oil spill were found on a pair of state beaches, becoming the first known evidence that gushing crude from the Deepwater Horizon well has reached all the Gulf states.
The amount of tar balls 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.
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. Another two gallons were found Sunday on the peninsula and Galveston Island.
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