Gulf oil spreads to Louisiana marshes

BP officials said Sunday their efforts to slow the oil leak weren't working as effectively as before, while the slick spread 19 kilometres into the heart of Louisiana's marshes and contaminated two major pelican rookeries.

A 1.6-kilometre-long tube inserted into the leaking well drew about 216,000 litres of oil within the past 24 hours, a spokesman said. That's a sharp drop from the 350,000 litres a day the device captured on Friday and the 800,000 litres last Monday.

However, the company has said the amount of oil drawn will vary widely from day to day.

Engineers were working furiously to stem the growing ooze as more wildlife and delicate coastal wetlands were tainted despite the oil-absorbing booms placed around shorelines to protect them.

Meanwhile, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Sunday the state is not waiting for federal approval to begin building sand barriers to protect its coastline from the spill.

The mounds of sand would close the door on the oil still belching from the deepwater gusher about 80 kilometres off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, he said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was studying the environmental impacts from the emergency barrier proposal and didn't immediately respond to emails and phone requests for comment.

Several top Obama administration officials were on their way to the Gulf Coast to monitor the oil-spill response.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa P. Jackson arrived Sunday, while Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were expected to arrive Monday.

Salazar said Sunday he didn't have much confidence in BP and "if we find that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately."

On Tuesday or Wednesday, BP said it will try to use other equipment to force mud then cement into the gusher to see if it can be plugged, a plan that has never been attempted underwater.

The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers, and sank two days later.

At least 22.7 million litres of crude have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico since then although a growing number of scientists have said they believe the figure is much higher.