KATRINA / "Major oil spill" seen on Mississippi River

Capacity of leaking tanks estimated at 160,000 barrels

A "major oil spill" has been spotted near two storage tanks southeast of New Orleans, the state Department of Environmental Quality said Friday.

The spill was first spotted Thursday during a flyover, department spokeswoman Jean Kelly told MSNBC.com, "but we still don’t have access to the area."

The spill was just north of Venice, a town in the Mississippi River Delta, and 65 miles southeast of New Orleans.

Each tank is 20 feet tall and 200 feet in diameter, she said. The department initially estimated that total capacity could be 1 million barrels each but later reduced that to 80,000 each. A barrel of oil is 42 gallons.

Kelly said the department still doesn't know who owns the tanks and therefore can’t be sure how much oil is in them.

The Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 involved about 250,000 barrels of oil.

Homeland Security officials were restricting access to the area, and Kelly said the state agency had notified both the Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency so that they can begin clean-up.

Coast Guard officials in St. Louis said they were looking into the report but that their priority was search and rescue in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The state agency said it was continuing to assess the situation from the air.

The department added that it hoped to soon have two helicopters dedicated to assessing wider areas for environmental problems.

Miguel Llanos
MSNBC