A month and a half after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion flooded the Gulf of Mexico with a massive slick, that oil appears to be nearing the coast of Florida.
Officials confirmed Tuesday that an oil sheen was floating about nine miles from the white sand shores of Pensacola Beach and could hit land Wednesday.
With winds forecasted to blow from the south and west, the slick could spread across several Panhandle beaches. Workers have begun shoring up miles of boom which will be used to try to keep oil from reaching inland waterways.
But the beaches will be left mostly unprotected.
"It's inevitable that we will see it on the beaches," said Keith Wilkins, deputy chief of neighborhood and community services for Escambia County.
As of Wednesday morning, Florida's tourism website said "there continue to be no confirmed oil sightings associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Florida's shores at this time."
Oil has already washed up in parts of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, in what is now the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
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Meanwhile, the latest effort to control the flow of oil one mile below the surface hit a snag Wednesday, when a saw being used to cut a pipe became stuck, according to the Coast Guard.
The plan to use underwater robots to cut the 20-inch pipe and cap it would only reduce the flow of oil, not completely stop it.
The difficulty of the procedure is high, experts said.
"It is an engineer's nightmare," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences. "They're trying to fit a 21-inch cap over a 20-inch pipe a mile away. That's just horrendously hard to do. It's not like you and I standing on the ground pushing -- they're using little robots to do this."
The effort to cap the pipe became necessary after last week's attempt to plug the leak with mud, the top kill maneuver, failed.
The best chance to completely plug the leak, a relief well, is apparently two months away.
