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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana : The United States closed off a large chunk of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing Tuesday as fears a giant oil slick could be swept to Florida's beaches and coral reefs overshadowed progress in stemming the spill.
The cautionary closure, totaling 45,728 square miles (118,430 square kilometres) -- around 19 per cent of the Gulf's federal waters -- was announced as politicians in Washington raged over the apparent lax enforcement of safety standards and grilled government officials over what went wrong.
The chief of the US agency monitoring the spill warned the "unprecedented and dynamic" slick was on course to sweep along the region's coastline.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) chief Jane Lubchenco told reporters the oil was "increasingly likely" to reach the powerful Gulf current that would carry it to the Florida Keys and perhaps even beyond -- if it has not already done so.
But she told lawmakers that once the oil reaches the Florida Strait -- within eight to 12 days of entering the loop current -- "it would likely be significantly weathered and degraded as well as diluted," showing up in the form of emulsified streamers and tar balls rather than fresh crude.
Experts meanwhile analyzed at least 20 tar stains found on several beaches of Florida's southern Keys to determine whether they came from the spill.
Senator Bill Nelson described the prospect of oil hitting his state of Florida and heading up the US eastern seaboard as his "worst nightmare."
The bleak warnings obscured BP's positive reports on progress in its month-long effort to contain the leak: a tube inserted into a gushing oil pipe is now sucking up about 40 per cent of the crude, twice as much as on Monday.
The company said its "riser insertion tube tool" is carrying about 2,000 barrels of oil a day up to the Discoverer Enterprise drill ship on the surface via a mile-long pipe.
BP reckons about 5,000 barrels (210,000) gallons, of crude is spewing each day from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon rig, although independent experts warn the flow rate could be at least 10 times as much.
Amid a political firestorm brewing over regulatory lapses, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pledged to revamp his agency's Minerals and Management Service (MMS) with "more tools, more resources, more independence."
He pointed to a "need to clean up that house," amid scathing criticism of the body and as the official in charge of leasing for offshore drilling, Chris Oynes, abruptly announced he would step down.
President Barack Obama voiced frustration with Republican lawmakers over holdups to a measure that would make oil companies pay to clean up spills in which they have played a role.
"I am disappointed that an effort to ensure that oil companies pay fully for disasters they cause has stalled in the United States Senate on a partisan basis," he said in a statement after Senator James Inhofe blocked a second attempt to pass a bill on an expedited course.
Questions of ultimate liability have raged in the wake of the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank to the sea floor. US law requires that oil firms pay up to 75 million dollars for economic damages, but the president and Democratic lawmakers have tried to raise the cap.
With hugely popular tourist beaches and fragile coral reefs around the southern tip of the peninsula, the loop current could take the spill's economic and environmental impact to a whole new level.
There are also concerns that huge underwater plumes of crude could be starving the Gulf of oxygen and thus harming the marine environment far more than previously thought.
Experts warned that the plumes found in deepwater spills may be linked to dispersants that stop the oil from rising.
"Normally, in a shallow spill, everything pretty much shoots up to the surface and the impacts are primarily to surface organisms like turtles, dolphins, whales and birds," explained Paul Montagna of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies.
However, "under this really cold, high-pressure environment, the oil is getting dispersed through the water column," the marines scientist said.
Salazar said he expected BP to attempt a "dynamic kill" this weekend to further contain the oil spewing from the well, which would involve injecting fluids and other materials to stem the flow. – AFP/jy
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