And that the oil would move to the west
and then north into U.S.
waters. However, the U.S.
Coast Guard said that the oil did
not represent an imminent threat to the
U.S. and the State Department, although
they offered assistance to Pemex, did
not aggressively offer assistance.
You're saying that the oil represented a
threat and the Coast Guard did not?
From our conversations with the Coast
Guard, we received the answer that
the oil at the beginning did not
represent an imminent threat.
There were Americans on that rig.
Could they have been responsible before
we placed all the blame on the Mexican?
Well, our information does not
specify who is responsible.
I don't think enough information has been
collected to really put the blame on
the Mexicans or the Americans.
But once again, we feel that it was
not equipment failure, but rather a
failure of judgment.
All right. I want to give everybody a
chance to see where an oil slick looks
like Mr. Ghaleb.
It is 500 miles from the Bay of Campeche
to the Texas coast.
And the fact that the oil can go that far
is another way of saying how big the
slick itself actually is.
Most of the oil that has come ashore on
the Texas coast has been south of Corpus
Christi. But this weekend, a fresh,
gooey sludge washed onto the sands of
Mustang Island and Port Aransas,
north of Corpus Christi.
So far, commercial and sport fishing have
been affected only slightly, but tourism
is said to be off by 60 percent.
Some local people complain that news
coverage has hurt business more than oil
slicks. But they are clearly upset by the
refusal of the Mexican so far to
discuss compensation for the damage that
is being done to the Texas coast by oil
from Mexico.
Well, if it had been us, everybody
else in the world would be having a lot
more to say about it than we have.
We're completely mad about it because
we've it's always been like that.
The United States negotiating with
foreign countries and we get to we get
the stinky end of the stick, so to speak.
Every day the Coast Guard flies directly
over the Gulf of Mexico to monitor
incoming oil slicks.
Yesterday, they found a big one not far
from Texas, described now by Coast Guard
Captain Roger.