Gulf oil slick now washing ashore is of “grave concern”

Update: The Obama administration has put new offshore drilling projects on hold.

Update #2: Check out Ben Hale’s post.

The massive oil slick spreading through the Gulf of Mexico extended a gooey finger toward the Mississippi Delta today, as these images taken by NASA’s Terra satellite show. And by late in the day Thursday, oil was “lapping the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines,” the Associated Press reported.

From the AP story:

“It is of grave concern,” David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press. “I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling.”

And this:

Government officials said the blown-out well 40 miles offshore is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated — about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day.

At that rate, the spill could eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history — the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989 — in the three months it could take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet underwater on the sea floor.

Ultimately, the spill could grow much larger than the Valdez because Gulf of Mexico wells tap deposits that hold many times more oil than a single tanker.