Globs of oil from BP gusher scar white sands of Florida

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. — The odor of oil hangs heavy in the sea air. Children with plastic shovels scoop up clumps of goo in the waves. Beachcombers collect tar balls as if they were seashells.

The BP catastrophe arrived with the tide on the Florida Panhandle's white sands Friday as the company worked to adjust a cap over the gusher in a desperate bid to arrest what is the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. President Obama, meanwhile, chastised the company after his third visit to the stricken Gulf Coast since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

The oil has reached the shores of four Gulf states — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida — turning its marshlands into death zones for wildlife and staining its beaches rust and crimson.

Six weeks after the explosion that killed 11 workers, the well has leaked between 22 million and 47 million gallons of oil, according to government estimates.

A device resembling an upside-down funnel was lowered over the blown-out well a mile beneath the sea late Thursday to try to capture most of the oil and direct it to the ship Enterprise on the surface. But crude continued to escape into the Gulf through vents designed to prevent ice crystals from clogging the cap. Engineers hope to eventually close the vents.

"Progress is being made, but we need to caution against overoptimism," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis.

Early in the day, he guessed that the cap was collecting 42,000 gallons a day, less than one-tenth of the amount leaking from the well. Since it was installed, it had collected about 76,000 gallons, BP said in a tweet late Friday.

BP officials said it would be a day or more before they could judge how successful the cap was at containing the leak.

But after a string of failures to contain the spewing well, they sounded hopeful. "Things are going as planned," said BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells about 12 hours into the operation. "I'm quite encouraged."

With its stock price plummeting and its chief executive under attack, BP came in for another scolding Friday from Obama.

After meeting with local and Gulf state officials, he criticized the oil giant for mounting an expensive advertising campaign and considering dividend payments.

"My understanding is that BP had contracted for $50 million worth of TV advertising to manage their image in the course of this disaster," the president said. "In addition, there are reports that BP will be paying $10.5 billion in dividend payments this quarter.

"Now, I don't have a problem with BP fulfilling its legal obligations. What I don't want to hear is that they're spending that kind of money on shareholders and spending that kind of money on TV advertising, (but) they're nickel-and-diming fishermen or small businesses here in the Gulf who are having a hard time."

BP has been expected to announce it would maintain dividend payments, but Obama's comments seemed aimed at changing the company's mind. Last year, it reported $27 billion in cash flow from operating activities. So far, it has spent more than $1 billion on the spill response.

In a conference call Friday with investors and analysts, BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said the oil industry needs better safety technology. As an example, he cited the "fail-safe blowout preventer, which this incident has clearly demonstrated is not fail-safe."

The effect of the BP spill, meanwhile, was increasingly evident on the Gulf coastline.

Swimmers at Pensacola Beach rushed out of the water after wading into the mess, while other beachgoers inspected the clumps with fascination, some taking pictures. Children were seen playing with the globs as if they were Play-Doh.

David Lucas, of Jonesville, La., and a group of friends cut their visit short after wading into oily water. "It was sticky brown globs out there," Lucas said after he and the others cleaned their feet and left.

Health officials said that people should stay away from the mess but that swallowing a little oil-tainted water or getting slimed by a tar ball is no reason for alarm.

Steven Majerus and his 11-year-old nephew walked along Pensacola Beach and checked out the oil clumps. Majerus filled a plastic bag with tar and photographed it with his phone. "It's really hot. See how hot it gets in this bag with the sun beating down on it?" he said.

Randy Ivie, a charter-boat captain, cried as he tried to explain how sad he was to think that his grandchildren might not see the same white beach and turquoise waters he enjoyed.

"It kills me," he said. "I grew up here."

In Gulf Shores, Ala., Wendi Butler saw clumps of tar in the surf and was repelled by the heavy odor of oil.

"It smells like a flight line. I know, my ex-husband was in the Air Force. He would come home from work every day smelling like this," said Butler, of Perdido Bay, Fla. "You don't smell the beach breeze at all."

On Grand Isle, where homes bear quirky names like "Shore Thing" and "The Sand Bar," residents hung new signs before Obama's visit. "Tony Bologna," read one, a dig at Hayward. On another home, named "Mama-Pappy Dream," a new sign was added: "Dream is Gone." Still another said: "End this nightmare."

"He ain't much of a leader," Eugene Ryman Jr. said of Obama. "The beach you can clean up. The marsh you can't. Where's the leadership? I want to hear what's being done. We're going to lose everything."