P-7 OIL SPILL NEWS UPDATE

PESTILENCES (CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS)

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences;(CHEMICAL,BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS) and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

POISONED WATERS

REVELATION 8:8-11
8 And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood;
9 And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.
10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood:(bitter,Poisoned) and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.(poisoned)

REVELATION 16:3-7
3 And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.(enviromentalists won't like this result)
4 And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.
5 And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.
6 For they(False World Church and Dictator) have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.

LIVE BP OIL FEED
http://interactive.foxnews.com/livestream/live.html?chanId=2&openAIR=true
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/26/bp-oil-spill-live-feed-vi_n_590635.html
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/
homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html
OBAMA ON OIL SPILL-VIDEO
http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/deepwater-bp-oil-spill-presidential-press-conference
PART 1-OIL SPILL NEWS
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2010/05/oil-still-gushing-as-of-645pm.html
PART 2-OIL SPILL NEWS
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2010/05/p-2-oil-slick-news-nay-29.html
PART 3-OIL SPILL NEWS
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2010/06/p-3-oil-spill-news-update.html
PART 4-OIL SPILL NEWS
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2010/06/p4-oil-spill-news.html
PART 5-OIL SPILL NEWS
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2010/06/p-5-oil-spill-news-update.html
PART 6-OIL SPILL NEWS
http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2010/06/p-6-oil-remembering-dead-from-rig.html

ITS 8:15 PM DAY 50 OF OIL SPILL JUNE 8,10.THE SAGA GOES ON.

ITS 9:12 AM WED JUNE 9,10.SEE WHAT THE SPILL REVEALS TODAY.OBAMAS OFF TOURING THE WORLD AND NOT ONCE DID I HEAR HIM SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE 11 DEAD MEN FROM THE RIG.THIS IS NO PRESIDENT THAT CARES FOR THE PEOPLE HE CARES FOR THE LINING IN HIS POCKETS AND TO DEFLECT THE BLAME FROM HIM DOING NOTHING.

OBAMA OVIOUSLY DOES NOT THINK THIS SPILL IS BAD.MEANWHILE IT IS 3 1/2 TIMES WORSE THEN THE EXXON SPILL THE WORST NEXT EVER IN AMERICA.DO YOU AMERICANS THINK SOETORO-OBAMA SHOULD WAKE UP AND SMELL THE OIL ROSES OR THE PINK ELEPHANTS OR THE KEEBLER ELVES OR THE SKY HOOK THAT HIS INVISIBLE GAS HAS PUT IN THE SKY.ITS 7:10PM JUNE 9,10.

ITS 12:38PM DAY 52 OF OIL SPILL THU JUNE 10,10.SEE WHAT HAPPENS TODAY.

ITS 4:40PM JUNE 10,10 AND THIS OIL SPILL CAN NOT BE STOPPED SOURCES ARE SAYING.ITS GONNA GET UGLY AS POISONOUS GASES ARE SPEWING SOURCES ALSO SAY AND THIS WILL EFFECT MORE THAN JUST THE OCEAN.REPORTS HAVE IT PEOPLE WILL BE DYING BIGTIME AND BABBIES WILL BE POISONED IN WOMENS WOMBS AND WILL CAUSE STILL BORN CHILDREN REPORTS SAY.REPORTS HAVE IT 4 TO 5 MILLION GALLONS ARE COMING OUT OF THE BREAK A DAY.BP MAY HAVE DRILLED INTO A UNDERGROUND VOLCANO THAT CAN NOT BE STOPPED.REPORTS HAVE IT ALSO THAT THE NEW WORLD ORDER & OBAMA WILL USE THIS DISASTER TO TAKE CONTROL OF THE OIL COMPANIES AND TO STOP DEEP OIL DRILLING IN AMERICA.REPORTS ALSO SAY THAT TROOPS WILL BE COMING IN THE AREA TO EVACUATE THE AREA AS THE OIL & POISON FROM THE SPILL GETS WORSE AND WORSE.WE WILL SEE IF THESE REPORTS COME ABOUT.

IF THIS IS A NEVER ENDING GUSHER IT WOULD BE THE BEGGINING OF FULFILLING PROPHECY THAT THE SMOKE OF HELLS CITIZENS TORMENTS GO UP FOREVER.ITS NO ACCIDENT THAT ITS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN ITS THE CLOSEST TO HELL A HUMAN CAN GET.IF THIS IS THE TORMENT FROM HELLS CITIZENS IT TELLS US HOW POISONESS AND SLIMY AND PUTRID HELL IS.
REVELATION 14:11
11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

ITS 4:15 AM DAY 53 FRI JUNE 11,10 OF THE OIL SPILL AND THE REPORTS ARE MIXED ON HOW MUCH OIL IS GUSHING FROM THE LEAK.
THE OIL SPILL POSSIBLE TRUTH-LINDSAY WILLIAMS(LAST HOUR)
http://rss.nfowars.net/20100610_Thu_Alex.mp3
VIDEO OF WILLIAMS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYhugmaAL3A&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncpwT0ScYww&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adiZE3cwYDM&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGdUziSaRCM&feature=player_embedded

INGREDIANTS POISONING PEOPLE IN THE OIL.VOLITAL ORGANIC COMPOUNDS IN THE ATMOSPHERE.

HYDROGEN SULFIDE-LEGEL PARTS PER BILLION-5-10
GOING IN THE AIR & WATER FROM THE SPILL 1,200 PARTS PER BILLION.

BENZINE-LEGEL PARTS PER BILLION-0-4
GOING IN THE AIR & WATER FROM THE SPILL 3000 PARTS PER BILLION.THIS STUFF CAUSES CANCERS,TOXIC,SYMTOMS-DIZZINESS,DRAWSINESS,HEADACHE,CONFUSION,TREMOR,RAPID HEART BEAT,UNCONCIOUSNESS,LONG TERM SYMTOMS-WEAKINS IMMUNE SYSTEM,DAMAGES BONE MARROW,BLOOD PROBLEMS,ATTACKS KIDNEYS,LUNGS AND BRAINS.

METHOLINE CHLORIDE-LEGEL PARTS PER BILLION-61
GOING IN THE AIR & WATER FROM THE SPILL 3000-3400 PARTS PER BILLION.

THEY ARE SAYING THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THIS WOULD BE A NUKE.IT WOULD TAKE MONTHS TO DO THAT.BUT IF THE STRATA GETS DESTROYED THE SPILL WOULD NEVER BE STOPPED AND GUSH ON FOREVER.

New oil numbers may mean more environmental damage By SETH BORENSTEIN and HARRY R. WEBER, Associated Press Writers 12:40PM JUNE 11,10

HOUSTON – New numbers showing the amount of oil gushing from a well in the Gulf of Mexico may be double as much as previously thought means the crude is likely to travel farther away, threatening more birds, fish and other wildlife that call the fragile waters their home, scientists said Friday.The new figures could mean 42 million gallons to more than 100 million gallons of oil have already fouled the Gulf's delicate ecosystem and are affecting people who live, work and play along the coast from Louisiana to Florida — and perhaps beyond.More oil means the giant gooey cloud can spread out over a greater distance, having far worse consequences for the environment, said Paul Montagna, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi.Doubling the amount of oil does not have a linear effect, it doesn't double the consequences, it may instead have quadruple the consequences, Montagna, who studies the Gulf of Mexico deep sea reefs and other underwater ecosystems, said.The new spill estimates released Thursday are worse than earlier ones — and far more costly for BP, which has seen its stock sink since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and triggered the spill. Most of the new estimates had more oil flowing in an hour than what officials once said was spilling in an entire day.The spill was flowing at a daily rate that could possibly have been as high as 2.1 million gallons, twice the highest number the federal government had been saying, said U.S. Geological Survey Director Marcia McNutt, who is coordinating estimates. But she said possibly more credible numbers are a bit lower.

Those estimates were the third — and perhaps not the last — time the U.S. government has had to increase its estimate of how much oil is gushing. Trying to clarify what has been a contentious and confusing issue, officials gave a wide variety of figures on Thursday.But none of the estimates took into account the cutting of the well's riser pipe on June 3 — which BP said would increase the flow by about 20 percent — and subsequent placement of a cap. No estimates were given for the amount of oil gushing from the well after the cut. Nor are there estimates since a cap was put on the pipe, which already has collected more than 3 million gallons.The increased estimates presents a larger danger to the animals who live the Gulf's coastal marshes, said John Andrew Nyman, a wetlands ecologist at Louisiana State University.

For example, the brown pelican population was believed to be near its healthy capacity before the spill, Nyman said, but with the spill continually gooing a larger area of its sensitive coastal habitat, the increase in pelican deaths could seriously impact the bird's recent recovery.This is a nightmare that keeps getting worse every week,said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club. We're finding out more and more information about the extent of the damage.The oil flow estimates are not nearly complete and different teams have come up with different numbers. A new team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute came in with even higher estimates, ranging from 1 million gallons a day to 2.1 million gallons. If the high end is true, that means nearly 107 million gallons have spilled since April 20.The Obama administration's point man for the Gulf Coast oil spill acknowledged Friday that reliable numbers are hard to get.I think we're still dealing with the flow estimate. We're still trying to refine those numbers,said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said.But even using other numbers that federal officials and scientists call a more reasonable range would have about 63 million gallons spilling since the rig explosion. If that amount was put in gallon milk jugs, they would line up for nearly 5,500 miles. That's the distance from the spill to London, where BP is headquartered, and then continuing on to Rome.By comparison, the worst peacetime oil spill, 1979's Ixtoc 1 in Mexico, was about 140 million gallons over 10 months, and the Exxon Valdez, the previous worst U.S. oil spill, was just about 11 million gallons. The new figures mean Deepwater Horizon is producing an Exxon Valdez size spill every five to 13 days.Meanwhile, oil still was washing up on Gulf beaches. But it wasn't as bad Friday morning at Orange Beach, Ala., as it had been earlier in the week. Waves brought in a foot-long chunk of what appeared to be solid oil on the white sand. One side was flat and curved, while the other was honeycombed with bubbles and a single spot where crude oozed out. Standing near the water line, Elaine Fox picked it up without a thought.

I'm not dead, I'm not sick,Fox, of West Monroe, La., said Friday.I think a lot of this is nothing but media hype.With all sorts of estimates for what's flowing from the BP well — some even smaller than the amount collected by BP in its containment cap — McNutt said the most credible range at the moment is between 840,000 gallons and 1.68 million gallons a day. Then she added that it was maybe a little bit more. Scientists used sonar, pressure readings and video analysis to make the new estimates. Previous estimates had put the range roughly between half a million and a million gallons a day, perhaps higher. At one point, the federal government claimed only 42,000 gallons were spilling a day and then it upped the number to 210,000 gallons. Allen said that it will be at least July before BP has the tankers in place to capture oil spilling from the well. And if undersea efforts to direct the oil to the surface succeed, it will take weeks to get the proper equipment in place to hold it, he said.A day earlier, the White House released a letter from Allen inviting BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and any appropriate officials from BP to meet Wednesday with senior administration officials. Allen said Obama, who has yet to speak with any BP official since the explosion, would participate in a portion of the meeting. Asked if a relationship of trust had been established between the White House and BP, Allen said Friday that This has to be a unified effort moving forward if we are to get this thing solved. If you call that trust, yes.Associated Press writers Jason Dearen, Tamara Lush, Ray Henry in New Orleans, Jay Reeves in Orange Beach, Ala., and Ben Evans in Washington contributed to this report. Weber reported from Houston, Borenstein from Washington.

With each look at oil flow, the numbers get worse By SETH BORENSTEIN and HARRY R. WEBER, Associated Press Writers - 3:15AM JUNE 11,10

HOUSTON – With each new look by scientists, the oil spill just keeps looking worse.

New figures for the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico show the amount of oil spewing may have been up to twice as much as previously thought, according to scientists consulting with the federal government.That could mean 42 million gallons to more than 100 million gallons of oil have already fouled the Gulf's fragile waters, affecting people who live, work and play along the coast from Louisiana to Florida — and perhaps beyond.It is the third — and perhaps not the last — time the U.S. government has had to increase its estimate of how much oil is gushing. Trying to clarify what has been a contentious and confusing issue, officials on Thursday gave a wide variety of estimates.All the new spill estimates are worse than earlier ones — and far more costly for BP, which has seen its stock sink since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and triggered the spill. Most of Thursday's estimates had more oil flowing in an hour than what officials once said was spilling in an entire day.This is a nightmare that keeps getting worse every week,said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. We're finding out more and more information about the extent of the damage. ... Clearly we can't trust BP's estimates of how much oil is coming out.The spill was flowing at daily rate that could possibly have been as high as 2.1 million gallons, twice the highest number the federal government had been saying, U.S. Geological Survey Director Marcia McNutt, who is coordinating estimates, said Thursday. But she said possibly more credible numbers are a bit lower.

The estimate was for the flow before June 3 when a riser pipe was cut and then a cap placed on it. No estimates were given for the amount of oil gushing from the well after the cut, which BP said would increase the flow by about 20 percent. Nor are there estimates since a cap was put on the pipe, which already has collected more than 3 million gallons.The estimates are not nearly complete and different teams have come up with different numbers. A new team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute came in with even higher estimates, ranging from 1 million gallons a day to 2.1 million gallons. If the high end is true, that means nearly 107 million gallons have spilled since April 20.Even using other numbers that federal officials and scientists call a more reasonable range would have about 63 million gallons spilling since the rig explosion. If that amount was put in gallon milk jugs, they would line up for nearly 5,500 miles. That's the distance from the spill to London, where BP is headquartered, and then continuing on to Rome.By comparison, the worst peacetime oil spill, 1979's Ixtoc 1 in Mexico, was about 140 million gallons over 10 months. The Gulf spill hasn't yet reached two months. The Exxon Valdez, the previous worst U.S. oil spill, was just about 11 million gallons, and the new figures mean Deepwater Horizon is producing an Exxon Valdez size spill every five to 13 days.As the crude continues to foul the water, Louisiana leaders are rushing to the defense of the oil-and-gas industry and pleading with Washington to immediately bring back offshore drilling. Though angry at BP over the disaster, state officials warn that the Obama administration's six-month halt to new permits for deep-sea oil drilling has sent Louisiana's most lucrative industry into a death spiral.They contend that drilling is safe overall and the moratorium is a knee-jerk reaction. They worry that it comes at a time when another major Louisiana industry — fishing — has been brought to a standstill by the Gulf mess.Mr. President, you were looking for someone's butt to kick. You're kicking ours,Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph said Thursday.The oil-and-gas brings in billions of dollars in revenue for Louisiana and accounting for nearly one-third of the nation's domestic crude production, and it took a heavy blow when the government imposed the moratorium.It's going to put us out of business,said Glenn LeCompte, owner of a Louisiana catering company that provides food to offshore rigs.

With all sorts of estimates for what's flowing from the BP well — some even smaller than the amount collected by BP in its containment cap — McNutt the most credible range at the moment is between 840,000 gallons and 1.68 million gallons a day. Then she added that it was maybe a little bit more.But later Thursday, the Interior Department said scientists who based their calculations on video say the best estimate for oil flow before June 3 was between 1.05 million gallons a day and 1.26 million gallons a day. The department mentioned only a cubic meter per second rate from Woods Hole — not a rate that translated into actual amounts — and those numbers only added to the confusion on just how much oil is gushing out. Previous estimates had put the range roughly between half a million and a million gallons a day, perhaps higher. At one point, the federal government claimed only 42,000 gallons were spilling a day and then it upped the number to 210,000 gallons. Associated Press writers Tamara Lush, Alan Sayre and Ray Henry in New Orleans, Chris Kahn in New York, Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, Mary Foster in Port Fourchon and Brian Skoloff in Morgan City contributed to this report. Weber reported from Houston, Borenstein from Washington.

BP to start burning captured Gulf oil at sea By BRIAN SKOLOFF and RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writers - 12:05PM JUNE 10,10

GRAND ISLE, La. – BP said Thursday that it plans to boost its ability to directly capture hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil gushing from a well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico by early next week.Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president of exploration and production, said a semi-submersible drilling rig would capture and burn about 420,000 gallons of oil daily. Once on board, the oil and gas collected from the well would be sent down a boom and burned at sea.A drill ship already at the scene can process a maximum of 756,000 gallons of oil daily that's sucked up through a containment cap sitting on the well head.The containment effort played out as BP stock continued to plunge amid fears that the company might be forced to suspend dividends and find itself overwhelmed by the cleanup costs, penalties, damage claims and lawsuits generated by the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.But markets were also beginning to heed warnings from analysts who said Wednesday's 15.8 percent sell-off of BP shares in New York was an overreaction. BP shares dropped as much as 11 percent to a 13-year low at the open in London on Thursday, then recovered some ground by early afternoon, trading 6.1 percent lower at $5.39. In New York, the stock opened 9.8 percent higher at $32.05.

BP has lost around half its market value since the spill began with the April 20 rig explosion that killed 11 workers and set off the spill in the Gulf. In the seven weeks since then, the company has lost half its market value. In a federal filing Thursday, the company said the cost of its response to the oil spill has grown to $1.43 billion.The latest slide came after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar promised a Senate energy panel to ask BP to compensate energy companies for losses if they have to lay off workers or suffer economically because of the Obama administration's six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling. In an interview Thursday on ABC's Good Morning America,Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu reiterated her call to end the moratorium, saying it will cause economic hardship in the region.Every one of these 33 deep-water wells employs, directly, hundreds of people and indirectly thousands," she said.Cleanup continued along the Gulf Coast. In Orange Beach, Ala., reddish-brown globs of oil the size of credit cards littered the beach at the tide line as a blue farm tractor loaded with shovels and other cleanup equipment chugged down the beach. Dozens of workers in orange vests and blue jeans prepared to start their day combing the beach for oil.Shrimpers, oystermen, seafood businesses, out-of-work drilling crews and the tourism industry who have filed damage claims with BP also are angrily complaining of delays, excessive paperwork and skimpy payments that have put them on the verge of going under as the financial and environmental toll of the seven-week-old disaster grows.Every day we call the adjuster eight or 10 times. There's no answer, no answering machine,said Regina Shipp, who has filed $33,000 in claims for lost business at her restaurant in Alabama.If BP doesn't pay us within two months, we'll be out of business. We've got two kids.BP spokesman Mark Proegler disputed any notion that the claims process is slow or that the company is dragging its feet.

Proegler said BP has cut the time to process claims and issue a check from 45 days to as little as 48 hours, if the necessary documentation has been supplied. BP officials acknowledged that while no claims have been denied, thousands and thousands had not been paid by late last week because the company required more documentation.At the bottom of the sea, the containment cap on the ruptured well is capturing 630,000 gallons a day and pumping it to a ship at the surface, and the amount could nearly double by next week to roughly 1.17 million gallons, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the crisis for the government.A second vessel expected to arrive within days should greatly boost capacity. BP also plans to bring in a tanker from the North Sea to help transport oil and an incinerator to burn off some of the crude.The additional system will use equipment previously employed to shoot heavy drilling mud down the well in an attempt to stop the flow, although this time the process will work in reverse. Oil will flow in lines from beneath the blowout preventer, a stack of piping on the sea floor, to a semi-submersible drilling rig called the Q4000.Oil and gas siphoned from the well will flow up the rig, where it will be sent down a boom, turned into a mist and ignited using a burner designed by Schlumberger Ltd. BP opted to burn the oil because storing it would require bringing in even more vessels to the already crowded seas above the leaking well.It was going to become too congested, it was not the safest way to do it, Wells said.Testing on the oil-burning system should begin over the weekend, and full production should start early next week, Wells said. The government has estimated 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons are leaking per day, but a scientist on a task force studying the flow said the actual rate may be between 798,000 gallons and 1.8 million. A task force member said an estimate come Thursday or Friday.Crews working at the site toiled under oppressive conditions as the heat index soared to 110 degrees and toxic vapors emanated from the depths. Fireboats were on hand to pour water on the surface to ease the fumes.Allen also has confronted BP over the complaints about the claims process, warning the company in a letter: We need complete, ongoing transparency into BP's claims process including detailed information on how claims are being evaluated, how payment amounts are being calculated and how quickly claims are being processed.

Under federal law, BP is required to pay for a range of losses, including property damage and lost earnings. Residents and businesses can call a telephone line to report losses, file a claim online and seek help at one of 25 claims offices around the Gulf.To jump-start the process, BP was initially offering an immediate $2,500 to deckhands and $5,000 to fishing boat owners. Workers can receive additional compensation once their paperwork and larger claims are approved. BP said it has paid 18,000 claims so far and has hired 600 adjusters and operators to handle the cases.Associated Press writers Harry R. Weber in Houston, Jay Reeves in Orange Beach, Ala., Eileen Sullivan and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report. Ray Henry reported from New Orleans.

Scared investors send BP shares to 14-year low By JANE WARDELL and MARK WILLIAMS, AP Energy Writers 6 PM JUNE 9,10

BP stock sank to its lowest point in 14 years Wednesday as investors feared the company would be overwhelmed by the costs of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps forcing it to cut its robust dividend to pay for the disaster.The stock dropped $5.45, or 16 percent — easily its worst day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded seven weeks ago. The company has lost half its market value, a stunning $95 billion, in that time.On Wednesday alone, 238 million shares of BP changed hands, an extraordinary number that was more than double the company's volume for some days earlier this month.It's not time for logic. It's not time for being rational, Fadel Gheit, energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., said of the selling.When people say run, you run too. It's a mob mentality.Political pressure is building on BP to slash its dividend or suspend it altogether until the well is capped and hundreds of miles of coastline have been cleaned up. Some investors worry the billions of dollars in liabilities could wipe the company out.The stock closed at $29.20, near its low for the day. Shares of Anadarko Petroleum, which owns a quarter of the sunken rig, fell 19 percent to their lowest level in five years. Transocean Ltd., which owns most of the rig, fell 8 percent.People are anticipating there's a chance that BP, Transocean and Anadarko are going to bankruptcy, said Scott Hanold, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.It's feeding on itself now.

He noted the cost to insure the debt of all three companies shot up Wednesday, a sign investors are increasingly worried the companies' ability to pay off what they owe.In Washington, the point man for the government's response to the spill said BP was capturing more than 630,000 gallons a day from the gushing well, an elevated figure that could mean both BP and the government have vastly underestimated the totals so far.Estimates for the total cost of the spill grow with every barrel that BP's failed well belches into the Gulf and with each oil-covered pelican or turtle that washes up on a devastated beach.Argus Research analyst Phil Weiss BP did exactly what it should not have with investors in response to the spill: They over-promised and under-delivered.A BP spokesman at the company's command center in Louisiana said he didn't know why the share price plunged. BP told investors Friday that it has considerable firepower to cover the cost of the spill and to give funds to investors.Cutting the dividend would have a big impact in Britain. BP accounts for about an eighth of dividend payments from companies in that country's blue-chip stock index, providing crucial income for retirees. In addition, about 40 percent of BP's shareholders are based in the U.S. BP hasn't said whether it would approve a payout for the second quarter.BP, which earned more than $16 billion last year, has already spent more than $1 billion dealing with the disaster. CEO Tony Hayward last week wouldn't estimate the total bill, though he told analysts that minority partners like Anadarko will be expected to pay as well.Gheit and other analysts say investors are overlooking the fact that BP has deep enough pockets to pay for the spill, fines and damages. It can also borrow another $15 billion, he said.

Analysts at Evolution Securities said the political and media frenzy in response to the Deepwater Horizon accident is understandable, but the share price response appears to be equally frenzied and irrational.But ratings agencies Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch have all downgraded the company, with Fitch warning further downgrades are possible if the clean up and political fallout are more costly than the agency's worst case $5 billion scenario.Matt Simmons, chairman emeritus of energy investment banking company Simmons International, said the oil spill will mean the end of BP as evidence mounts that the spill is far worse than first thought.There's no way the company can survive this,he said.Wardell reported from London. Williams reported from Columbus, Ohio. AP Reporter Chris Kahn in New York, contributed to this report.

Gulf residents angry about BP and claims process By BRIAN SKOLOFF and RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writers - JUNE 9,10 6:30 PM

GRAND ISLE, La. – Gulf Coast fishermen, businesses and property owners who have filed damage claims with BP over the oil spill are angrily complaining of delays, excessive paperwork and skimpy payments that have put them on the verge of going under as the financial and environmental toll of the disaster grows by the day.Out in the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, the oil company Wednesday captured an ever larger-share of the crude gushing from the bottom of the sea and began bringing in more heavy equipment to handle it.The containment effort played out as BP stock plunged to its lowest level in 14 years amid fears that the company might be forced to suspend dividends and find itself overwhelmed by the cleanup costs, penalties, damage claims and lawsuits generated by the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Shrimpers, oystermen, seafood businesses, out-of-work drilling crews and the tourism industry all are lining up to get paid back the billions of dollars washed away by the disaster, and tempers have flared as locals direct outrage at BP over what they see as a tangle of red tape.Every day we call the adjuster eight or 10 times. There's no answer, no answering machine, said Regina Shipp, who has filed $33,000 in claims for lost business at her restaurant in Alabama. If BP doesn't pay us within two months, we'll be out of business. We've got two kids.An Alabama property owner who has lost vast sums of rental income angrily confronted a BP executive at a town meeting. The owner of a Mississippi seafood restaurant said she is desperately waiting for a check to come through because fewer customers come by for shrimp po-boys and oyster sandwiches.Some locals see dark parallels to what happened after Hurricane Katrina, when they had to wait years to get reimbursed for losses.It really feels like we are getting a double whammy here. When does it end?said Mark Glago, a New Orleans lawyer who is representing a fishing boat captain in a claim against BP.BP spokesman Mark Proegler disputed any notion that the claims process is slow or that the company is dragging its feet.Proegler said BP has cut the time to process claims and issue a check from 45 days to as little as 48 hours, provided the necessary documentation has been supplied. BP officials acknowledged that while no claims have been denied, thousands and thousands of claims had not been paid by late last week because the company required more documentation.

At the bottom of the sea, the containment cap on the ruptured well is capturing 630,000 gallons a day and pumping it to a ship at the surface, and the amount could nearly double by next week to roughly 1.17 million gallons, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the crisis for the government.A second vessel that will arrive within days is expected to greatly boost capacity. BP also plans to bring in a tanker from the North Sea to help transport oil and an incinerator to burn off some of the crude.The government has estimated 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons are leaking per day, but a scientist on a task force studying the flow said the actual rate may be between 798,000 gallons and 1.8 million.Crews working at the site toiled under oppressive conditions as the heat index soared to 110 degrees and toxic vapors emanated from the depths. Fireboats were on hand to pour water on the surface to ease the fumes.Allen also confronted BP over the complaints about the claims process, warning the company in a letter: We need complete, ongoing transparency into BP's claims process including detailed information on how claims are being evaluated, how payment amounts are being calculated and how quickly claims are being processed.The admiral this week created a team including officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with the damage claims. It will send workers into Gulf communities to provide information about the process. He also planned to discuss the complaints with BP officials Wednesday.Under federal law, BP is required to pay for a range of damage, including property losses and lost earnings. Residents and businesses can call a telephone line to report losses, file a claim online and seek help at one of 25 claims offices around the Gulf. Deckhands and other fishermen generally need to show a photo ID and documentation such as a pay stub showing how much money they typically earn.

To jump-start the process, BP was initially offering an immediate $2,500 to deckhands and $5,000 to fishing boat owners. Workers can receive additional compensation once their paperwork and larger claims are approved. BP said it has paid 18,000 claims so far and has hired 600 adjusters and operators to handle the cases. The oil giant said it expects to spend $84 million through June alone to compensate people for lost wages and profits. That number could grow as new claims are received. When it is all over, BP could be looking at total liabilities in the billions, perhaps tens of billions, according to analysts. BP stock dropped $5.45, or 16 percent, Wednesday — easily its worst day since the April 20 rig explosion that set off the spill. In the seven weeks since then, the company has lost half its market value.The latest slide came after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar promised a Senate energy panel to ask BP to compensate energy companies for losses if they have to lay off workers or suffer economically because of the Obama administration's six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. Calculating what is owed to victims of the spill has proved challenging.David Walter owns an Alabama company that makes artificial reefs that anglers buy and drop in the Gulf to attract fish, but state regulators stopped issuing permits for the reefs on May 4 because of the oil spill — effectively killing off $350,000 in expected business.When Walter called a claims adjuster working for BP, he was told to provide four years of invoices for May, June and July along with tax returns for those years. Walter said he sent the forms by overnight mail, but the adjuster assigned to his case changed offices and could not be found. The documents were lost.After making more inquiries, Walter said, he was instructed to gather the same documents and this time go to a claims office. There, an adjuster told Walter he would be eligible for only a $5,000 payment since his tax returns showed a technical business loss when depreciation was factored in. I said that's not fair because if you say that, then I have to go out of business and I lose everything,Walter said. He is now working with an accounting firm to calculate his losses.

Not everyone had complaints about the claims process.Bart Harrison of Clay, Ala., filed his first claim on Wednesday morning for lost rental income on his coastal property and expected to have a check for $1,010 within a few hours. The only documentation required was tax returns and rental histories for his units, which were both easy to provide.The guy I talked to was knowledgeable and respectful. It seemed like he really wanted to write a check and please me since it was my first time in, Harrison said.Associated Press Writers Harry R. Weber in Houston, Jay Reeves in Alabama, Eileen Sullivan and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report. Ray Henry contributed from New Orleans.

BP plans to burn some oil pumping up to surface By RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writer - JUNE 9,10 8:20 AM

NEW ORLEANS – Now that crews are collecting more and more oil from the sea-bottom spill, the question is where to put it.How about burning it? Equipment collecting the oil and bringing it to the surface is believed to be nearing its daily processing capacity. A floating platform could be the solution to process most of the flow, BP said.To burn it, the British oil giant is preparing to use a device called an EverGreen Burner, officials said. It turns a flow of oil and gas into a vapor that is pushed out its 12 nozzles and burned without creating visible smoke.

Methods for gathering and disposing of the oil collected from the seafloor gusher are becoming clearer. What's not is how much oil is eluding capture.Scientists on a team analyzing the flow said Tuesday that the amount of crude still spewing into the Gulf of Mexico might be considerably greater than what the government and company have claimed.Their assertions — combined with BP's rush to build a bigger cap and its apparent difficulty in immediately processing all the oil being collected — have only added to the impression that BP is still floundering in dealing with the catastrophe.Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen has written to BP CEO Tony Hayward demanding more detail and openness about how the company is handling mounting damage claims in the wake of the Gulf Coast oil spill. Allen reminded Hayward in the letter dated Tuesday that the company is accountable to the American public for the economic loss caused by the oil spill and said he recognized Hayward has accepted responsibility for it.At the same time, the man President Barack Obama named as national incident commander in the wake of the April 20 oil rig explosion and fire told Hayward that BP is failing to provide information we need to meet our responsibilities to our citizens.Speaking to network news shows Wednesday morning, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles continued to insist that no massive underwater oil plumes in large concentrations have been detected from the spill. His comments came a day after the government said water tests confirmed underwater oil plumes, but that concentrations were low.It may be down to how you define what a plume is here, Suttles told NBC's Today show.A cap placed on the ruptured well last week to channel much of the billowing oil to a surface ship collected about 620,000 gallons Monday and another 330,000 from midnight to noon Tuesday, BP said.That would mean the cap is collecting better than half the escaping oil, based on the government's estimate that around 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons a day are leaking from the bottom of the sea.A team of researchers and government officials and run by the director of the U.S. Geological Survey is studying the flow rate and hopes to present its findings in the coming days on what is already the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

In an interview with The Associated Press, team member and Purdue University engineering professor Steve Wereley said it was a reasonable conclusion but not the team's final one to say that the daily flow rate is, in fact, somewhere between 798,000 gallons and 1.8 million gallons.Whatever the amount, all that oil has to end up somewhere. The floating production and storage vessel BP plans to bring in could be part of the answer, officials said.It's being brought in because it can handle far more oil than this well is producing, said Wine, who did not know where the vessel would come from or when it would arrive.The burn rig will be moved away from the main leak site so the flames and heat do not endanger other vessels, BP spokesman Max McGahan said. Depending on which model is used and its settings, it can handle from 10,500 to 630,000 gallons of oil a day, according to promotional materials by Schlumberger Ltd., the company that makes the device and whose website touts it as producing fallout-free and smokeless combustion.It's unclear how many times the EverGreen burner has been used, but it has been proposed for at least one offshore rig in the North Sea to get rid of unwanted gases produced during oil processing.Environmental documents produced as part of that project, an exploration well proposed by Total E&P of Britain, said burning the oil posed a moderate risk to the environment that would release sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, methane and other chemicals.

But Wilma Subra, a chemist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said BP should avoid burning the captured oil — which she said raises new health risks — and instead bring in more processing equipment. This is one of those decisions that will have negative impacts,she said.Even though it's crude dispersed in water, the burning of crude will raise some health issues.When it sells the oil recovered from the Gulf, BP will use the revenues to create a fund to protect wildlife in the region, the company said.In the seven weeks since the oil rig explosion that set off the catastrophe, BP has had to improvise at every turn. The most recent government estimates put the total amount of oil lost at 23.7 million to 51.5 million gallons.

When asked why BP did not have containment systems on standby in case of a leak, BP spokesman Robert Wine said there was no reason to think an accident on this scale was likely.It's unprecedented, he said. That's why these caps weren't there before.
Obama is scheduled to return to the Gulf Coast on Monday and Tuesday for a two-day update on the Gulf oil spill.Contributing to this report were AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein in Washington and Associated Press writers Matthew Brown in Billings, Mont., Harry R. Weber in Houston, Tamara Lush and Jeff McMillan in New Orleans, and Brian Skoloff in Barataria Bay, La.

AP IMPACT: BP spill response plans severely flawed By JUSTIN PRITCHARD, TAMARA LUSH and HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writers – Wed Jun 9, 4:54 am ET

VENICE, La. – Professor Peter Lutz is listed in BP's 2009 response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a national wildlife expert. He died in 2005.Under the heading sensitive biological resources, the plan lists marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals. None lives anywhere near the Gulf.The names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which are no longer in service.BP PLC's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig are riddled with omissions and glaring errors, according to an Associated Press analysis that details how BP officials have pretty much been making it up as they go along. The lengthy plans approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one.BP Exploration and Production Inc. has the capability to respond, to the maximum extent practicable, to a worst case discharge, or a substantial threat of such a discharge, resulting from the activities proposed in our Exploration Plan,the oil giant stated in its Deepwater Horizon plan.

In the spill scenarios detailed in the documents, fish, marine mammals and birds escape serious harm; beaches remain pristine; water quality is only a temporary problem. And those are the projections for a leak about 10 times worse than what has been calculated for the ongoing disaster.Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, La., says there are 3,000 acres (of wetlands) where life as we know it is dead, and we continue to lose precious marshland every day.There are other wildly false assumptions. BP's proposed method to calculate spill volume based on the darkness of the oil sheen is way off. The internationally accepted formula would produce estimates 100 times higher.The Gulf's loop current, which is projected to help eventually send oil hundreds of miles around Florida's southern tip and up the Atlantic coast, isn't mentioned in either plan.The website listed for Marine Spill Response Corp. — one of two firms that BP relies on for equipment to clean a spill — links to a defunct Japanese-language page.In early May, at least 80 Louisiana state prisoners were trained to clean birds by listening to a presentation and watching a video. It was a work force never envisioned in the plans, which contain no detailed references to how birds will be cleansed of oil.And while BP officials and the federal government have insisted that they have attacked the problem as if it were a much larger spill, that isn't apparent from the constantly evolving nature of the response.This week, after BP reported the seemingly good news that a containment cap installed on the wellhead was funneling some of the gushing crude to a tanker on the surface, BP introduced a whole new new set of plans mostly aimed at capturing more oil.The latest incarnation calls for building a larger cap, using a special incinerator to burn off some of the recaptured oil and bringing in a floating platform to process the oil being sucked away from the gushing well.

In other words, the on-the-fly planning continues.

Some examples of how BP's plans have fallen short:-Beaches where oil washed up within weeks of a spill were supposed to be safe from contamination because BP promised it could marshal more than enough boats to scoop up all the oil before any deepwater spill could reach shore — a claim that in retrospect seems absurd. The vessels in question maintain the necessary spill containment and recovery equipment to respond effectively,one of the documents says.BP asserts that the combined response could skim, suck up or otherwise remove 20 million gallons of oil each day from the water. But that is about how much has leaked in the past six weeks — and the slick now covers about 3,300 square miles, according to Hans Graber, director of the University of Miami's satellite sensing facility. Only a small fraction of the spill has been successfully skimmed. Plus, an undetermined portion of the spill has sunk to the bottom of the Gulf or is suspended somewhere in between. The plan uses computer modeling to project a 21 percent chance of oil reaching the Louisiana coast within a month of a spill. In reality, an oily sheen reached the Mississippi River delta just nine days after the April 20 explosion. Heavy globs soon followed. Other locales where oil washed up within weeks of the explosion were characterized in BP's regional plan as safely out of the way of any oil danger.

-BP's site plan regarding birds, sea turtles or endangered marine mammals (no adverse impacts) also have proved far too optimistic. While the exact toll on the Gulf's wildlife may never be known, the effects clearly have been devastating. More than 400 oiled birds have been treated, while dozens have been found dead and covered in crude, mainly in Louisiana but also in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. On remote islands teeming with birds, a visible patina of oil taints pelicans, gulls, terns and herons, as captured in AP photos that depict one of the more gut-wrenching aspects of the spill's impact. Such scenes are no longer unusual; the response plans anticipate nothing on this scale. In Louisiana's Barataria Bay, a dead sea turtle caked in reddish-brown oil lay splayed out with dragonflies buzzing by. More than 200 lifeless turtles and several dolphins also have washed ashore. So have countless fish. There weren't supposed to be any coastline problems because the site was far offshore.Due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected, the site plan says.But that distance has failed to protect precious resources. And last week, a group of environmental research center scientists released a computer model that suggested oil could ride ocean currents around Florida and up to North Carolina by summer.

-Perhaps the starkest example of BP's planning failures: The company has insisted that the size of the leak doesn't matter because it has been reacting to a worst-case scenario all along.Yet each step of the way, as the estimated size of the daily leak has grown from 42,000 gallons to 210,000 gallons to perhaps 1.8 million gallons, BP has been forced to scramble — to create potential solutions on the fly, to add more boats, more boom, more skimmers, more workers. And containment domes, top kills, top hats.

While a disaster as devastating as a major oil spill will create some problems that can't be solved in advance, or even foreseen, BP's plans do not anticipate even the most obvious issues, and use mountains of words to dismiss problems that have proven overwhelming.In responses to lengthy lists of questions from AP, officials for BP and the Interior Department, which oversees oil rig regulator Minerals Management Service, appear to concede there were problems with the two oil spill response plans.Many of the questions you raise are exactly those questions that will be examined and answered by the presidential commission as well as other investigations into BP's oil spill,said Kendra Barkoff, spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. She added that Salazar has undertaken transformational reforms of MMS. Said BP spokesman Daren Beaudo from Robert, La.: We expect that a complete review of the regional response plans and planning process will take place as part of the overall incident investigation so that we can determine what worked well and what needs improvement. Thus far we have implemented the largest spill response in history and many, many elements of it have worked well. However, we are greatly disappointed that oil has made landfall and impacted shorelines and marshes. The situation we are dealing with is clearly complex, unprecedented and will offer us much to learn from.
A key failure of the plan's cleanup provisions was the scarcity of boom — floating lines of plastic or absorbent material placed around sensitive areas to deflect oil.

From the start, local officials all along the Gulf Coast have complained about a lack of supplies, particularly the heavier, so-called ocean boom. But even BP says in its regional plan that boom isn't effective in seas more than three to four feet; waves in the Gulf are often bigger. And even in calmer waters, oil has swamped vital wildlife breeding grounds in places supposedly sequestered by multiple layers of boom.The BP plans speak of thorough resources for all; there's no talk of a need to share. Still, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said his shores were left vulnerable by Coast Guard decisions to shift boom to Louisiana when the oil threatened landfall there.
Meanwhile, in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, Nungesser and others have complained that miles of the boom now in the water were not properly anchored. AP reporters saw evidence he was right — some lines of boom were so broken up they hardly impeded the slick's push to shore.Some out-of-state contractors who didn't know local waters placed boom where tides and currents made sure it didn't work properly. And yet disorganization has dogged efforts to use local boats. In Venice, La., near where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf, a large group of charter captains have been known to spend their days sitting around at the marina, earning $2,000 a day without ever attacking the oil.But perhaps the most glaring error in BP's plans involves Lutz, the professor, one of several dozen experts recommended as resources to be contacted in the event of a spill.Lutz is listed as a go-to wildlife specialist at the University of Miami. But Lutz, an eminent sea turtle expert, left Miami almost 20 years ago to chair the marine biology department at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He died four years before the plan was published. Associated Press Writers Brian Skoloff in Grand Isle, La., Harry R. Weber in Houston, and Jason Bronis in New Orleans contributed to this report. Lush reported from New Orleans. Pritchard reported from Los Angeles.

Gulf oil leak may be bigger than BP says By RAY HENRY, HARRY R. WEBER and SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press Writers JUNE 8,10 8:20 PM

NEW ORLEANS – While BP is capturing more oil from its blown-out well with every passing day, scientists on a team analyzing the flow said Tuesday that the amount of crude still escaping into the Gulf of Mexico may be considerably greater than what the government and the company have claimed.Their assertions — combined with BP's rush to build a bigger cap and its apparent difficulty in immediately processing all the oil being collected — have only added to the impression that BP and the government are still floundering in dealing with the catastrophe and may be misleading the public.The cap that was put on the ruptured well last week collected about 620,000 gallons of oil on Monday and another 330,000 by noon Tuesday funneled it to a ship at the surface, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the crisis. That would mean the cap is capturing better than half of the oil, based on the government's estimate that around 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons a day are leaking from the bottom of the sea.The undersea efforts came as BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles struck an upbeat tone about the anticipated progress of the oil containment, saying that the spill should be down to a relative trickle by Monday or Tuesday.Suttles told The Associated Press in a stop in Alabama that the arrival of a second vessel in the coming days to help pump the oil from the deepwater gusher will allow engineers to make significant progress, even as others involved in the disaster were much less optimistic and continued to criticize BP over its litany of failures to control the spill.A team of researchers and government officials assembled by the Coast Guard and run by the director of the U.S. Geological Survey is studying the flow rate and hopes to present its latest findings in the coming days on what is already the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

In an interview with The Associated Press, team member and Purdue University engineering professor Steve Wereley said it was a reasonable conclusion but not the team's final one to say that the daily flow rate is, in fact, somewhere between 798,000 gallons and 1.8 million gallons.BP is claiming they're capturing the majority of the flow, which I think is going to be proven wrong in short order, Wereley said. Why don't they show the American public the before-and-after shots? He added: It's strictly an estimation, and they are portraying it as fact.Other members of the team also told AP they expect their findings to show higher numbers than the current government estimate, but they weren't ready to say how much higher.To install the containment device snugly, BP engineers had to cut away the twisted and broken well pipe. That increased the flow of oil, similar to what happens when a kink is removed from a garden hose. BP and others warned that would happen, and the government said the increase amounted to about 20 percent.Asked about the containment effort and the uncertainties in estimating how much oil is escaping, Allen said: I have never said this is going well. We're throwing everything we've got.Paul Bommer, a University of Texas petroleum and geosystems engineering professor and member of the flow rate team, said cap seems to have made a dent in reducing the flow, but there is still a lot of oil coming out. That seemed clear from the underwater spillcam video, which continued to show a big plume of gas and oil billowing into the water.The current equipment collecting the oil being brought to the surface is believed to be nearing its daily processing capacity. BP said it will boost capacity by bringing in a floating platform it believes can process most of the flow, and believes the extra pumping power can help reduce the spill by early next week, when President Barack Obama is scheduled to make his fourth visit to the Gulf since the disaster began.

The company also said it will use a device that vaporizes and burns off oil while working to design a new cap that can capture more crude.In the seven weeks since the oil rig explosion that set off the catastrophe, BP has had to improvise at every turn. The most recent government estimates put the total amount of oil lost at 23.7 million to 51.5 million gallons.I think virtually everybody from BP to the state to the Coast Guard was caught flat-footed and did not expect a spill of this magnitude, said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University. Everybody has been playing catch-up.When asked why BP did not have containment systems on standby in case of a leak, BP spokesman Robert Wine said there was no reason to think an accident on this scale was likely. It's unprecedented, he said.That's why these caps weren't there before.Kenneth Arnold, an offshore drilling consultant and engineer, said the reason a bigger cap wasn't installed first was that BP probably wanted to start with what it could do quickly, which he said makes sense. He said BP has been working several solutions all along in parallel and deploying them as they can. They haven't been waiting for one to fail and then employing the next one, Arnold said. He added: The idea you can wave your arm at this and come to a magical solution is just from someone who doesn't understand the problem. We as a nation are used to instant gratification. There is a problem. We want someone to fix it tomorrow. Things are not always that easy.Some answers may emerge next week, when BP CEO Tony Hayward will make his first appearance before Congress to answer questions in what will probably be a heated session, given the anger directed at BP. The debate over the flow rate came as workers in bulldozers piled sand 6 feet high along barrier islands bordering Louisiana to protect the environmentally fragile areas from the spill, which has already coated islands and pelican rookeries in thick, brown, sticky crude. This is finally something that can help, fishing guide Dave Marino said of the sand barrier effort. It looks like this is something that may work.Attempts to skim the oil progressed as well. Boats fanned out across the Gulf, dragging boom in their wake in an attempt to corral the oil. But it's an enormous task.

In some spots, the oil is several inches thick and forms a brown taffy-like goo that sticks to everything it touches. John Young, chairman of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish Council, said additional equipment has been ordered and more dredgers will be moving into the area soon, along with barges that will help block the passes. It's nice that BP has put up the money, but they need to ramp up not only the manpower but the equipment out there because we're losing the battle, Young said. Unfortunately, we're on day 50 and it's too little too late, but I guess it's better late than never.Meanwhile, researchers are beginning to obtain a clearer picture of the spill as they analyze water samples. For example, marine scientists found a 100-foot-thick layer of oil 1,300 feet below the surface about 45 miles from the well site. And officials in the Florida Panhandle are posting signs warning beachgoers not to swim or fish off a six-mile stretch of oil-fouled beaches near the Alabama state line — the first time such restrictions have been imposed in the state since the spill began.Harry R. Weber reported from Houston, Seth Borenstein from Washington, Jay Reeves in Gulf Shores, Ala., Tamara Lush from New Orleans, Brian Skoloff from Barataria Bay, La., and Mitch Stacy from St. Petersburg, Fla.