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Miss. River oil spill idles ships near New Orleans

July 25 06:05:01 AM, Yahoo News

AP - Dozens of cargo ships, petrochemical tankers and smaller vessels stacked up Thursday near a closed stretch of the Mississippi River, a day after a collision between a barge and tanker spilled more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil into the nation's busy shipping waterway.

Nearly 200 ships are stacked up in a bottleneck on the bustling waterway to commerce. A stretch of the river has been closed since Wednesday, when a barge split open in a collision with an oil tanker. Port officials say it will take days to clear the idled ships.

Roughly 419,000 gallons of oil spilled on the river.

Authorities are investigating why there wasn't a properly licensed pilot aboard the tugboat towing the barge that contained the oil.

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