White House Declares Halt on New Offshore Drilling

BATON ROUGE, La. (April 30) -- The White House said today it is halting all new offshore drilling in U.S. waters until there's an "adequate review" of a massive 600-mile-wide oil slick that has begun to drift into Louisiana's wetlands.

Florida's governor declared an emergency in six Pandhandle counties, and BP pledged to reimburse people whose property is damaged by the spill.

Winds, high tides and waves through the weekend were forecast by the National Weather Service, forces that could push oil into lakes and inlets around southeast Louisiana. Thunderstorms are expected today, along with seas of 6 feet to 7 feet that pushed tides several feet above normal.

Forecasters say the spill could reach Mississippi within a day, Alabama in two and Florida by early next week.

"The oil slick is generally moving in a northerly direction and threatens Florida's coast," Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said in his emergency declaration, which seeks to ensure a fast response in his state to the spill.

The federal government is defending its response to the spill, which began with an April 20 blast on one of BP's offshore rigs that burned for two days before sinking. Rescuers saved 115 workers, but 11 are presumed dead. It wasn't until Thursday -- nine days after the explosion -- that the White House declared it "a leak of national significance."

White House senior adviser David Axelrod told ABC's "Good Morning America" today that President Barack Obama has decided there will be no new domestic offshore drilling until an investigation of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is complete.

"All he has said is that he is not going to continue the moratorium on drilling, but ... no additional drilling has been authorized, and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable," Axelrod said, defending the administration's policy of expanding drilling.

Up to 210,000 gallons of light crude oil are thought to be oozing into the gulf daily, at a rate that means this spill could exceed the volume of Alaska's 1989 Exxon Valdez accident by the third week of June, making it the worst U.S. oil spill ever. The Exxon Valdez tanker rammed a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound, spilling heavy crude oil, which experts say is far more difficult to clean up than light crude.

"I want to assure you that the federal response has been sustained. It was immediate, and we know that we have a situation that has got to have every resource put toward it," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara told NBC's "Today" this morning.

But Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal questioned whether BP had done enough to fight the spill.

"I do have concerns that BP's current resources are not adequate to meet the ... challenges we face and I have urged them to see more help," Jindal said at a Robert, La., news conference with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Strong southeast winds blew thin oil strands across the water's surface and into coastal wetlands near the mouth of the Mississippi River overnight, The Associated Press reported. The Coast Guard had crews out in small boats this morning to patrol coastal areas and see where the oil has spread.

Aerial crews dropped chemical dispersants onto the slick, but oil-skimming operations were halted because of rising waves, said Doug Suttles, a BP executive.

Suttles said a new dispersal technique -- pumping the chemicals near the leak's source, 5,000 feet below the water's surface -- could begin this evening.

On Thursday, Obama pledged "every single available resource" to plug the leak, dispatching "SWAT" inspection teams to the rigs in the area and three top administration officials to oversee the response. Jindal declared a state of emergency, and the state moved up the start of the shrimping season to help fishermen collect their catch before the oil reaches them.

Brent Roy, who charters fishing boats off Louisiana's coast, said rough seas forecast through Saturday could make it difficult for authorities to contain the spill offshore. "As it gets into the wildlife management area, it is going to kill us," he told Agence France-Presse.

"It's the worst-case scenario for shrimpers, oyster harvesters, crabbers -- all the commercial fishermen," Roy said, referring to Louisiana's $2.6-billion-a-year fisheries industry, which is in one of the world's richest seafood grounds.

The slick also imperils the habitats of hundreds of species of migrating birds, nesting pelicans, river otters and mink along the coast's barrier marshes and islands. Brice-O'Hara said 180,000 feet of protective barriers have been floated out to try to protect "wetlands and fragile ecosystems."

"This has a danger of becoming an utter ecological disaster," said Ken Medlock, a fellow in energy and resource economics at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston. "This is going to result in remediation costs and is going to be burdensome, to say the least," he told Bloomberg News.

At least two lawsuits have already been filed against BP by shrimpers and fishermen who fear the spill could bankrupt their businesses, and by families of some of the 11 workers killed in the blast.

"We are taking full responsibility for the spill, and we will clean it up, and where people can present legitimate claims for damages, we will honor them. We are going to be very, very aggressive in all of that," BP CEO Tony Hayward told Reuters today.