The authorities of BP are making consistent efforts to clean up the oil spills on the beaches of Gulf of Mexico. The whole cost for this purpose has risen to $3 billion from $2.65 billion a week earlier. The outflow of funds is being made to engineers, to businesses and Government in the form of payouts.

The Navy Airship has been sent to the Gulf, which is capable of staying in the air for 12 hours (much longer than helicopters or airplanes). According to the unified command, it will be used to monitor oil, support skimming operations and detect wildlife that may be in suffering.

But the weather is creating a disruption for the cleaning up.

The world’s largest oil skimmer, the supertanker named A Whale, is thought to be able to suck up 21 million gallons of oily water a day, but stiff winds and choppy seas have made that unworkable so far. The work came to a halt along the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida because of frequent stirring up by seas due to Hurricane Alex.

On Monday, Tar balls also were found in one of the two passes that connect New Orleans' Lake Pontchartrain with the Gulf of Mexico. State officials closed some fishing areas around the lake as a defensive measure.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stated that it had expanded the closed gulf area to fishing to include parts of the oil slick. The closed area now includes 81,181 square miles of federal waters in the gulf.