Crews Battle to Keep 30-Mile Slick From Texas Coast; Bacteria Readied

Crews used skimmers, booms and chemicals Thursday to battle a 30-mile-long slick from the burning supertanker Mega Borg, and officials geared up to unleash oil-eating bacteria.

It would be the first use of microbes in water to clean up an oil spill, state officials said.

Six days after the first of a series of explosions in the area of the engine room, a small fire continued to burn aboard the crippled Norwegian vessel, 57 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

“It looks like the fire is being contained to a very small area in the engine room,” Coast Guard spokesman Gene Maestas said.

Flames could be seen on the deck’s rear section, and four fireboats showered the Mega Borg with their water cannons. The rear section, shrouded in smoke, continued to be awash.

Oil escaping from a hole in the vessel’s 5.5-million-gallon center tank apparently was spilling at a slower rate, although Coast Guard officials had no specifics.

State officials devised a plan to apply the oil-eating microbes to parts of the slick. The experimental process, called bioremediation, would be used as a demonstration and would not be a major part of the cleanup, officials said.

The dispersant works by breaking up the oil, creating a light sheen and tar balls--a rather common sight on Texas beaches.

The 886-foot Mega Borg, which carried 38 million gallons of light African crude oil, already has lost about 3 million gallons of oil since late Friday’s explosion; most of it has burned off or evaporated. About 12,000 gallons remained on the water Thursday, Coast Guard Capt. Thomas Greene said.

The slick was about 30 miles from Galveston.