Gulf Oil Spill Less Destructive Than Expected : Environment: The slick is smaller than originally estimated. It also isn’t moving as fast as feared, or with as much force.

Momentarily pushed out of mind by the ground battle and now overshadowed by blazing oil field fires in Kuwait, the great oil spill of the Persian Gulf War has not moved nearly as fast or with as much destructive force as had been expected.

But even so, the slick--if smaller than originally thought--is perhaps six times bigger than the infamous Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. And it is methodically despoiling the northeast coast of Saudi Arabia.

The spill has killed an untold number of birds, fish and mammals and ruined their delicate coastal habitat--maybe forever, officials said. It continues to pose a threat to drinking water in Saudi Arabia.

In late January, the spill--which the United States termed environmental terrorism committed by Iraqi troops--was estimated at 7 million barrels, or 294 million gallons. Some estimates had put the figure even higher, all the way up to 450 million gallons.

But U.S. Coast Guard surveys after the end of hostilities have reduced the estimated size of the spill to between 1.5 million and 2 million barrels, or 63 million to 84 million gallons. By comparison, the March, 1989, Exxon Valdez spill totaled about 11 million gallons.

“It’s still a catastrophe, no doubt about it. But the extreme-end figures which showed (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein in the worst possible light have now been revised,” said one Coast Guard officer.

Knowledgeable environmentalist sources disputed the revised estimate, calling it low--perhaps by half. But they too acknowledged that the spill’s size was initially overstated.

Whatever its size, “a lot of oil” remains offshore from Saudi Arabia, Coast Guard Capt. Donald Jensen said Wednesday. “Everyone who overflew it was amazed at the amount of oil that was there.”

Jensen, who returned to the United States last week after a month in the Middle East as chief of the U.S. Interagency Assessment Team, spoke at the International Oil Spill Conference, meeting in San Diego.

The spill dwarfs the relatively modest cleanup efforts under way to protect Saudi Arabia’s water supply, hydroelectric plants and harbor facilities.

Saudi officials report arrivals of extra equipment every few days, but only by the planeload, not by cargo ship and not with the urgency or the $1-billion investment that Western officials said would be needed to make an all-out stand against the oil.

“The Saudis were geared to handle the routine spills. . . . but never, certainly, a spill of this magnitude,” Jensen said.

As of this week, sources indicated that less than $10 million had been committed to the fight, and private contractors were reportedly unpaid for some work.

Jensen and other U.S. officials who recently returned from the Gulf said recent policy decisions by the Saudi government should speed the cleanup. Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, is taking the lead in spill cleanup, on the expectation that it will be reimbursed later by the Saudi government and its Western allies.

Oil companies said the cleanup in Alaska cost more than $2 billion and involved, at its peak, 11,000 workers and volunteers scouring the waters and beaches. Jensen and other U.S. government officials declined Wednesday to estimate the eventual Gulf cleanup cost.

An aerial survey of the Gulf last weekend found that the spill had torn itself into ribbonlike strings and coalesced into globs of dark tar floating on the light-blue waters. Officials said the oil was collecting and concentrating in a coastal pocket between the northern border town of Khafji and the port area of Jubayl, the site of the desalination plant from which Saudi Arabia gets most of its fresh water.

One other much-smaller spill was afloat farther north in the Gulf, and various oil facilities from Kuwait city south to Khafji were suspected of continued oil leaks.

The good news for Saudi Arabia is that the main slick is coming ashore north of the Jubayl plant and does not seem to be heading south. The bad news is that the pocket-like coastal area where the oil is collecting, known as Dawhat Ad Dafi, is an ecologically rich stretch of seashore-breeding ground for a wide variety of Gulf creatures and provides a dense habitat for migratory birds.

All through the Ad Dafi region, beaches are heavily oiled, with tar balls and oily “mousse” floating offshore in depths ranging from a quarter-inch to a foot. Aerial surveys also show oil slowly sinking into the water along the tidal areas.

Environmentalists caution that the weather patterns that have kept the slick at bay may not last. A shift could send huge amounts of oil farther south toward Jubayl. Even if the oil stays put, they add, toxic chemicals from the breakdown of the petroleum may work their way into the Jubayl desalination plant’s underwater intakes.

So far, the devastation of wildlife has not matched the magnitude of early projections, but it could not be determined whether this reflects good fortune or simply incomplete methods of inventory.

Saudi officials said three turtles had been treated at the Jubayl Wildlife Rescue Project. Numerous immature turtles have been found dead, along with juvenile shrimp, and one Western official predicted that the northern Gulf shrimp industry would be wiped out.

During one 11-day period in February, the Saudis collected 745 oiled birds from beaches in the area. All but 198 died, their digestive systems poisoned by petroleum. No mammals have been reported dead, although dolphins and manatee-like dugongs have been sighted swimming in oiled waters.

Almost from the start, the Saudi government has found itself faulted, if gently and discreetly, by Westerners who said they would have expected a more energetic cleanup and counterattack.

The Saudis responded with an explanation that the expense of the Persian Gulf War had put them in the unusual position of being short of cash.

Normally, spill control teams “go to the source” to minimize damage, said Robert Caron, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official who recently returned from Saudi Arabia and attended the San Diego conference. Because of the war, however, crews “had to wait for the oil to come to us.”

Cleanup crews said that the fighting may have stopped between Iraq and coalition troops but that transportation difficulties, floating mines in the Gulf and unexploded ammunition on the beaches of Kuwait mean “we’re still on a war footing, essentially.”

Still, it did not seem to U.S. observers that the Saudis were as well-organized as they might have been. Jensen described turf battles inside the Saudi government as “role-clarification issues” that should have been resolved “well before a spill.”

Times staff writer Greg Johnson in San Diego contributed to this story.