Efforts to siphon off oil gushing from a ruptured deep-sea wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico were starting to work, U.S officials said on Saturday, while President Barack Obama defended his handling of the environmental crisis.The containment cap that British energy giant BP Plc clamped over the ruptured wellhead collected about 6,000 barrels of oil on Friday, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said at a briefing in Theodore, Alabama.On its Twitter feed, BP said that "a total of 6,077 barrels of oil was collected" on June 4. "Improvement in oil collection is expected over the next several days," the company said.Allen said a higher collection rate could be achieve by closing vents in the cap as engineers stabilized pressure in the wellhead on the sea floor a mile (1.6 km) deep.While the collection rate is still only about one-third of one day's flow from the leaking oil well, which has been estimated at about 19,000 barrels (800,000 gallons/3 million liters) per day, it was the first significant progress in an unfolding environmental disaster now into its 47th day.With the cap in place over the wellhead, the plan is to funnel escaping oil and gas through a large hose from to the surface, where it would be collected in ships and safely removed.Early estimates were that the cap might be about to capture only 1,000 barrels a day.BP does not expect to fully halt the oil flow until August, when two relief wells are due to be completed.Meanwhile, Allen said that winds continue to push parts of the giant oil slick closer to the coastline across a wide area -- roughly from the Mississippi/Alabama border to Port St Joe in the Florida Panhandle, or more than 200 miles (320 kilometers).About 32 percent of Gulf federal waters, or 78,200 square miles (202,500 sq km), remains closed to fishing, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.Late Friday, NOAA reopened about 16,000 square miles (41,400 sq km) that had been closed on June 2 to fishing as a precaution.The unfolding ecological and economic disaster has presented a stern test of Obama's leadership. The president has faced criticism that the U.S. government has not done enough to tackle the crisis.In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Obama said his administration has put in place the largest response to an environmental disaster in U.S. history. The government had been "mobilized on every front," with more than 1,900 ships and 20,000 people helping clean up the spill, he said.The president paid his third visit on Friday to the Gulf Coast since the offshore oil rig blowout.BP, facing a U.S. criminal probe amid mounting lawsuits, dwindling investor confidence and growing questions about its credit-worthiness, delayed word on Friday on whether it would suspend an upcoming dividend payment to shareholders, as some U.S. politicians demanded.(Additional reporting by Chris Baltimore and Kristen Hays in Houston, Jeff Mason in Kenner, La., Kelli Dugan in Alabama, Tom Bergin and Sarah Young in London and Jane Ross in Pensacola; Writing by Ros Krasny; Editing by Philip Barbara)News posted by www.newsinfoline.com
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