How far has the oil spread? Might it escape the Gulf of Mexico?
Oil, in forms ranging from a light surface sheen to tar balls to thick red-brown sludge, has washed ashore along the Gulf Coast from marshes in western Louisiana and Mississippi to beaches in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Tar balls were found July 7 in Lake Pontchartrain, north of New Orleans, Louisiana. There was concern during May and early June that the Gulf’s loop current could carry oil to the Florida Keys, the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, but those fears appear to have abated.
