Miss. River spill idles ships near New Orleans NEW ORLEANS (AP) (wrkf) - A bottleneck caused by a massive spill of heavy fuel oil on the Mississippi River at New Orleans entered its third day today with about 200 vessels stacked up.

The Coast Guard said 58 vessels are stopped in the river and 97 are waiting at the Southwest Pass. Another 37 are waiting on the Intercoastal Waterway.

Forty-eight more vessels are en route to the river and they are expected to arrive over the weekend.

The Coast Guard say reopening nearly 100 miles of river to ship traffic could take days, and efforts to clean up the oily sheen left by largest oil spill on the river since 2000 could take weeks.

Only about 9,500 gallons of oil have been cleaned from the fast-flowing river by early today. That's a fraction of the 419,000 gallons stored aboard the barge that split open early Wednesday in the collision with the Liberian-flagged tanker Tintomara. © Copyright 2009, wrkf