The latest satellite and overflight data shows a "small portion" of the BP oil slick has reached the Loop Current "in the form of light to very light sheens," the federal government said Wednesday.
But the update also cautioned that "in the time it would take for oil to travel to the vicinity of the Florida Straits, any oil would be highly weathered and both the natural process of evaporation and the application of chemical dispersants would reduce the oil volume significantly."
The statement by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration added that the oil might not be carried to the Florida Straights at all if it gets caught in a clockwise eddy in the middle of the Gulf.
"Oil entrained in the Loop Current would require persistent onshore winds or an eddy on the edge of the Loop Current for it to reach the Florida shoreline," NOAA said. "If this were to occur, the weathered and diluted oil would likely appear in isolated locations in the form of tar balls."
MMS to become 3, not 2, agencies
Also Wednesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the federal agency at the center of the Gulf spill disaster will be split into three groups to avoid any conflicts of interest.
The original plan announced last week would have created one entity charged with inspecting oil rigs, investigating oil companies and enforcing safety regulations, and another to oversee leases for drilling and collection of billions of dollars in royalties.
The new plan will keep those two bureaus and add a third to oversee development of offshore drilling.
"The Minerals Management Service has three distinct and conflicting missions that – for the benefit of effective enforcement, energy development, and revenue collection – must be divided," Salazar said in a statement.
The agency has long been accused of being too cozy with the oil and natural gas industry.
Environmental groups welcomed the further division.
The original plan "did nothing to address the agency’s conflict of interest because it put the environmental-permitting process in the same division with the revenue-collection process," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Today’s announcement for the first time splits out the environmental-permitting program."
Also Wednesday, the Coast Guard said that tar balls that floated ashore in the Florida Keys are not linked to the oil spill, but that did little to soothe fears a blown-out well gushing a mile underwater could spread damage along the coast from Louisiana to Florida.
"The results of those tests conclusively show that the tar balls collected from Florida Keys beaches do not match the type of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The source of the tar balls remains unknown at this time," the Coast Guard said in a statement.
But the Coast Guard remained on the alert for oil contamination.
"The conclusion that these tar balls are not from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident in no way diminishes the need to continue to aggressively identify and clean up tar ball-contaminated areas in the Florida Keys," said Coast Guard Capt. Pat DeQuattro, commanding officer of Sector Key West.
Despite the laboratory result, Florida Keys authorities are still preparing for possible impact from the Gulf spill as many forecasters see some oil from it being sucked by a powerful ocean flow, the Loop Current, around the Florida Keys and perhaps even up to Miami beaches.
Heavy oil in wetlands
In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal said Wednesday that a blanket of heavy oil had washed ashore in Louisiana's fragile marshlands, in the first significant heavy oil landfall from the spill.
"The day that we have all been fearing is upon us today," Jindal said after a boat tour to the southernmost point of the Mississippi river estuary.
"This wasn't tar balls. This wasn't sheen. This is heavy oil in our wetlands," he told a news conference in Venice, Louisiana. "It's already here but we know more is coming."
Previously, officials had been reporting "oil debris" in the form of tar balls, or light surface "sheen" coming ashore in outlying parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Jindal appealed to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to issue a permit to allow the construction of 80 miles of sand levees to protect the Louisiana coastline from further damage.
Questions remained about just how much oil is spilling from the well, and senators expressed frustration about a lack of answers during a full day of hearings that included top executives from BP PLC, the oil giant that leased the blown well, and Transocean Ltd., the rig owner.
New underwater video released by BP showed oil and gas erupting under pressure in large, dark clouds from its crippled blowout preventer on the ocean floor. The leaks resembled a geyser on land.
A Purdue University expert on Tuesday said that based on the new video his earlier spill estimate of 70,000 barrels a day was too conservative.
Mechanical engineering professor Steve Wereley, an expert on measuring fluid flow, said while he could not give a firmer estimate he felt the difference is "considerable."
The Coast Guard stands by its estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.
In other developments:
- The U.S. and Cuba were holding talks on how to respond to the spill, a U.S. State Department official said, underscoring worries about the oil reaching a strong current that could carry it to the Florida Keys and the pristine white beaches of Cuba's northern coast.
- BP said it is now collecting 3,000 barrels of oil a day from the leaking well.
- BP said it hopes to beging shooting a mixture known as drilling mud into the well early next week. Engineers hope to start the procedure known as a "top-kill" by Sunday. It could take several weeks to complete, but if it works it should stop the oil.
- Several lawmakers asked for the shutdown of the BP-operated Atlantis oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico until federal regulators can prove the region's second biggest rig is operating safely.
- An attorney wants more than 100 lawsuits filed against BP and other companies combined quickly in a single federal court to avoid what he called legal chaos that could delay potential payments of billions of dollars in damages.
- The first sea turtle has been treated for oiling. The baby Kemp's ridley turtle was found Tuesday night.
- Senate Democrats are calling for the Obama administration to improve inspections of deepwater oil rigs and to require that oil companies pay for the emergency inspections, not taxpayers.
White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said Interior Department workers were "currently inspecting every deepwater platform in the Gulf," following a directive from Salazar last month.
Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for Salazar, said the Minerals Management Service has completed its inspections of all 30 deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf. The inspections focused on blowout preventers and on making sure well-control drills were performed as required by regulations, Barkoff said.
Inspectors found violations on two rigs that have since been corrected, she said.
Monthly inspections of working drilling rigs will continue, she added. The minerals agency conducts about 29,000 inspections per year.
