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BP Spill Threatens Alabama, Mississippi Coasts as Hurricane Season Begins

By John Duce and Eduard Gismatullin

June 1 (Bloomberg) -- Oil from the biggest spill in U.S. history could spread this week to threaten the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, according a weather forecast that comes as the Atlantic hurricane season officially starts.

Winds from the southwest are predicted this week, pushing the oil from BP Plc’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico to a wider area of the U.S. coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement on its Web site.

“Results indicate that oil may move north to threaten the barrier islands off Mississippi and Alabama later in the forecast period,” the agency known as NOAA said.

BP abandoned an attempt to plug the well spewing millions of gallons of oil and said it will now try to contain the spill by fitting a pipe over the leak later this week to bring the oil to a drillship on the surface. Ships seeking to funnel oil from the leak a mile under the sea may need to seek shelter in a port if a hurricane enters the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. hurricane season, which begins June 1 and ends Nov. 30, may be one of the most active on record, potentially hampering BP’s efforts as response cost rose to $990 million, or about $24 million a day, after an attempt to plug the gushing well failed.

BP is modifying its system to collect crude to a ship on the surface to achieve “greatest flexibility for operations during a hurricane,” according to a statement posted on its Web site yesterday.

Hurricane Forecast

As of yesterday, the Unified Area Command in Robert, Louisiana, reported oil along 100 miles of Louisiana coastline. Nearly 100 birds and five sea turtles have been found dead or visibly oiled, according to the Command’s latest report. Hundreds more birds and turtles may have been affected, the report says.

Fifteen to 20 named storms may develop in the season threatening both the Gulf of Mexico and the U.S. East Coast, according to Greg Holland, director of the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The 2010 hurricane season in the Atlantic has an 85 percent chance of being above normal, with a 70 percent probability of 14 to 23 named storms with 8 expected to become hurricanes, NOAA said on May 27. “The conditions expected this year have historically produced some very active Atlantic hurricane seasons,” the agency said.

Katrina Damage

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused the levees protecting New Orleans to fail, flooding the city and killing more than 1,800 people. That hurricane, as well as Rita in September the same year, tore through the Gulf of Mexico with winds of 170 miles per hour (274 kilometers per hour), toppling production platforms, setting rigs adrift and rupturing pipelines.

In 2006, BP was still repairing oil installations such as the leaking well discovered in Grand Isle that were damaged during the 2005 hurricane season. In 2008, BP reported an oil discharge from a platform, one of 15 BP-operated rigs in the Grand Isle off the Louisiana Coast, which were being decommissioned after damaged from Katrina and Rita. BP couldn’t explain the origin of the leak that time.

-- With assistance from Jim Polson in New York. Editors: Will Kennedy, Jonas Bergman.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Duce in Hong Kong at [e-mail] Gismatullin in London at [e-mail]

Last Updated: June 1, 2010 06:16 EDT