Giant Blobs Of Oil Washing Up On Texas Beaches

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas — Gooey oil blobs as big as basketballs have been washing up on the sandy beaches of South Padre Island in Texas, officials said Thursday.

The Texas General Land Office said it doesn't know what is causing the tar-like blobs, but authorities were working to clean up the popular tourist destination. Beaches have not been closed.

Crews "scooped out a bunch of tar balls on the beach," agency spokesman Jim Suydam told The Associated Press. "We're doing analysis of the currents to track it back to the source as well as collecting some of the tar balls for chemical analysis to see where it came from."

At least seven 55-gallon drums of oil have been removed since Wednesday morning after tourists began calling in reports of seeing blobs of oil on the beach, Suydam said.

"We don't know the source. We suspect it's coming from south of the border," he said. Texas authorities are in the process of contacting Mexican officials for help pinpointing the contamination, he said.

The spill was first reported at the mouth of the Rio Grande when what appeared to be fresh crude oil began washing ashore. The tar balls affected about one mile of beach from the mouth of the Rio Grande to the town of South Padre Island.

"We are working to quickly clean this up and will take any steps necessary to protect South Padre Island beaches, as well as the South Bay Coastal Preserve," General Land Office Commissioner Jerry Patterson said in a statement.

South Padre Island, located on the tip of southern Texas, is an internationally known beach destination that is bordered by the Gulf of Mexico and Laguna Madre Bay.

Though the beaches remain open, state officials want people to stay away from the oil blobs. Baby oil can be used to wash the skin if contact with the oil occurs, they said.

Comments

[rollingdivision]

09:21 PM on 07/26/2009

Could be natural.

[nippyfan]

10:17 AM on 07/26/2009

Spilling over from George Bush's yard.

[TxAggie]

01:10 PM on 07/29/2009

W's house is 300 miles away.....

[Yohomegirl]

08:56 PM on 07/25/2009

As it should!

[Bartolo27]

01:35 PM on 07/25/2009

and O did I fail to mention - Don't eat the fish. Full of PCBs and other nasties from the oil and chemical industry.

Very sad and a real loss. Back in the 60's it was a nice place. Clean, Great fishing swimming, we used to get ice chests full of Big Blue Crab in Galveston Bay with chicken necks on string.
The crabs liked that chicken neck. Wouldn't let go until you shook em lose into the ice chest.

The republican mind set has turned it into a cesspool - a chemical dump.

[Bartolo27]

01:23 PM on 07/25/2009

I prefer mine with a garnish of medical waste. And the subtle yet invisible Flesh Eating Bacteria that Galveston now has.

Great place for the kids of 2010!

[pbh493]

03:37 PM on 07/24/2009

Sadly, with Galveston as our closest beach, "tar" and oil globules have been a beach staple since the 60's.

[timmyturner]

11:43 AM on 07/24/2009

Gather the oil off the beach and recycle it.

[tailgateshirts]

11:33 PM on 07/23/2009

whahhhhhh texas getting hurt by their oil drilling, and they wonder why FL doesnt want the drilling

[TxAggie]

06:59 PM on 07/24/2009

Sorry to disappoint but it has not a darn thing to do with drilling....

[tiredlady]

10:28 PM on 07/23/2009

Hey,but let's not close off-shore drilling in sensitive areas. Some oil exec won't get his stock option bonus if we don't drill.

[TxAggie]

09:04 PM on 07/23/2009

Now let's don't panic- could be tar seeps (which hapen everyday in the GOM), could be a shipping leak or who knows what. Did anyone notice that it is being cleaned up, IT IS BEING CLEANED UP, everything will be OK. San Diego- don't panic if PXP is allowed to drill, the royalties just might save your state's economy.

Will Huffpo update us when they determine the source of the tar? I doubt it.

[mamacat]

08:23 PM on 07/23/2009

The gobs of tar look like what we get on some of the beaches here in California. There are a lot of natural tar seeps under the waters off of our beaches, especially in the areas where there are oil derricks, such as Santa Barbara and north of there. At least in California, tar is a natural occurence that has been going for as long as people have been around to notice it. It is very annoying, but not much can be done about it.

If this looked like oil, I would be inclined to accept that it could have come from a pipeline or a ship. Since it looks like tar, I suspect it has a natural source.

Would any oil companies be willing to purchase this tar, if it were recovered by people out-of-work and willing to do the dirty job? How much would a barrel of impure tar go for these days? We could avoid the expense of a public clean-up and add a little bit to the supply of oil.

[classicalgeek]

07:50 PM on 07/23/2009

South Padre Island is nationally protected seashore and home to a fragile ecosystem with many species that are rare. It's one of the few cases of people and nature coexisting peacefully. The blobs of oil (which I used to see regularly at Galveston when I was a child) need to be stopped from contaminating the ecosystem.

[wadenelson1]

07:43 PM on 07/23/2009

Ha ha ha.

Drill baby drill.

Those of us old enough remember what happened to Santa Barbara.

[kacy234]

12:37 AM on 07/25/2009

If you don't want to drill in your back yard, then you can not use any gasoline that is refined from the Gulf coast.

[slithers]

07:03 PM on 07/23/2009

That's giant?

[wadenelson1]

07:43 PM on 07/23/2009

Get one in your hair and face while you're swimming and then tell me.

[slithers]

08:10 PM on 07/23/2009

That still doesn't make it giant.

[truthartbeauty]

06:38 PM on 07/23/2009

it probably came from mexico. I lived there for 5 years. they throw trash out their windows as a matter or course, throw trash everywhere. they think nothing of polluting anything. It was beautiful there except for the trash, thrown by their residents, that is everywhere.

[jake106]

06:35 AM on 07/25/2009

You're a racist. HAHAHA!