BP resumed full siphoning operations from the ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well on Thursday, but Florida was forced to close down popular tourist beaches at the height of the summer season as more crude washed ashore.
BP has spent US$2.35 billion in its response to the spill, the company said yesterday.
The figure included the cost of “the spill response, containment, relief well drilling, grants to the Gulf states, claims paid, and federal costs,” it said in a statement.
The vast slick has already soiled the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, but could spell disaster for Florida, one of the world’s top tourist destinations with more than 80 million visitors a year. The state’s 2,000km of western coastline is home to scores of popular beaches as well as pristine coral reefs and an important fishing industry.
“There’s oil both in the water and in the sand,” said Warren Bielenberg, an official with the Gulf Islands National Seashore, one of the areas in northwestern Florida affected by the spill.
The swimming ban runs from far western Florida to the east side of Pensacola Beach through Santa Rosa Island, one of the region’s most popular tourist attractions, as oily sludge washed up along the shoreline.
“It’s pretty ugly, there’s no question about it,” Florida Governor Charlie Crist said.
State officials have mounted an aggressive beach and coastline cleanup effort to stop the oil from reaching Florida beaches.
At a time of high unemployment in other sectors, tourism in Florida generates more than 1 million jobs, bringing the state US$65 billion in revenue in 2008.
Oil siphoning operations, however, resumed at around 7pm on Wednesday, some 11 hours after BP removed the containment cap over the gushing well after a remotely operated submarine robots bumped into the device.
The accident shut down a vent, forcing gas up into part of the system. The device traps spewing crude and siphons it up to two surface vessels, the Discovery Enterprise and the Q4000.
The system had been capturing some 25,000 barrels of leaking oil a day, but capacity was cut for 24 hours to midnight on Wednesday, officials overseeing the spill response said.
The setbacks were bad news for Bob Dudley who replaced gaffe-prone British CEO Tony Hayward as BP’s spill response coordinator on Wednesday.
Dudley is an American who spent much of his childhood in Mississippi, one of the four southern US states currently threatened by the catastrophe.
His first day on the job was further marred by the news that two people involved in spill cleanup efforts were reported dead in separate incidents — one described as a swimming pool accident, the other a likely suicide.
On Thursday Dudley and three other BP executives met with Carol Browner, US President Barack Obama’s assistant for Energy and Climate Change, to discuss “key issues including containment, redundancy, claims and scientific monitoring,” the White House said.
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