Efforts to siphon off oil gushing from a ruptured deep-sea wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico seem to be working, U.S officials said on Saturday, as President Barack Obama defended his handling of the environmental crisis.After soiling wetland wildlife refuges in Louisiana and barrier islands in Mississippi and Alabama, the black tide of pollution has reached some of the famous white beaches of Florida, nicknamed the "Sunshine State." The toll of dead and injured birds and marine animals is climbing.But 47 days into the crisis and after several false starts, a partial solution finally seems to be at hand.The containment cap that British energy giant BP Plc clamped over the leak collected about 6,000 barrels of oil on Friday, well above initial estimates, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said at a briefing in Theodore, Alabama.BP estimated the collection at 6,077 barrels, and on its Twitter feed said that "improvement in oil collection is expected over the next several days."The collection rate is still only about one-third of one day's flow from the leaking oil well, which has been estimated by the government at about 19,000 barrels (800,000 gallons/3 million liters) per day, but was the first significant progress in the nearly seven-week-old drama that has captured the world's attention.Allen said the full capacity of BP's containment device was 15,000 bpd, which he called the "upper limit" of the current leak control effort.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).Florida's fishermen got a glimmer of good news when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration late on Friday reopened about 16,000 square miles (41,400 sq km) to fishing that had been closed on June 2 as a precaution.Still, about 32 percent of Gulf federal waters, or 78,200 square miles (202,500 sq km), remains closed to fishing in waters off four states. The U.S. shrimp and oyster supply, in particular, is heavily concentrated in the Gulf.Out-of-work fishermen aired their frustration with BP and the government at a free hamburger and hot dog lunch in Lafitte, Louisiana, on Friday."It's all up in the air right now," said Jerry Perrin, who has harvested crabs and shrimp for 60 years off Louisiana. "The government needs to start spending more money now."OBAMA'S TESTObama on Friday paid his third visit to the Gulf Coast since the April 20 oil rig blowout, which killed 11 workers, amid criticism that the government has not moved aggressively 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," he said.BP, meanwhile, delayed a decision on Friday to suspend an upcoming shareholder dividend worth over $2 billion for the quarter, as some U.S. politicians have called for.The company faces a U.S. criminal probe, lawsuits, dwindling investor confidence and growing questions about its credit-worthiness. Its share price was been stripped of about one-third of its value since the crisis began.Chief Executive Tony Hayward insisted the company had plenty of money to meet its obligations, including $5 billion in cash and additional credit lines it could tap. BP has said it had already spent $1 billion on the disaster, and the tab is rising.Neither Obama nor BP fared well in a new CBS public opinion poll on Friday that found an overwhelming majority of Americans believing that both the president and the company should be doing more to clean up the spill.SUNSHINE STATE TARREDThe far-flung but fragmented oil slick appeared to make its first landfall in Florida on Friday as tar balls and oily sheen washed up on Pensacola Beach on the Panhandle.Local officials are bracing for more impact from the spill on the state's $60 billion-a-year tourism industry.Protesters planned an anti-BP rally for Sunday at a BP gas station in downtown Pensacola -- although such grass-roots actions are mostly seen as damaging to small business owners who run the stations, with little impact on the London-based corporation's revenues.Latest figures from the U.S. government on Friday showed 527 birds across the Gulf Coast have been collected dead over a 45-day period, although not all showed signs of oil.Tom Bancroft, chief scientist for the National Audubon Society, said the government's numbers tell only part of the story. "Some (birds) just sink under the water and will never be counted," he said.Of particular concern, Bancroft said, are threatened shore birds that breed on Gulf Coast beaches like the Wilson's Plover. The spill could also be "a really bad setback" for the brown pelican, Louisiana's state bird, which was only removed from the endangered species list in 2009.NOAA reports many heavily oiled sea turtles in the spill area. The turtles are being caught, cleaned and transported to an Audubon Aquarium outside New Orleans for further care.(Additional reporting by Chris Baltimore and Kristen Hays in Houston, Jeff Mason in Kenner, La., Kelli Dugan in Alabama, and Jane Ross in Pensacola; Writing by Ros Krasny; Editing by Philip Barbara)News posted by www.newsinfoline.com
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