Oil spill reaches all US states around the Gulf

The US Coast Guard said it was possible that the oil had attached

itself to a ship and was not carried naturally by currents to eastern Texas, but there was no way to know for certain.

The amount discovered is tiny in comparison to what has coated beaches so far in the hardest-hit parts of the Gulf coast in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. It still provoked the quick dispatch of cleaning crews and a vow that BP will pay.

Texas land commissioner Jerry Patterson said: "Any Texas shores...will be cleaned up quickly and BP will be picking up the tab."

An explosion on April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and started the worst oil spill in Gulf history.

Hans Graber, a marine physicist at the University of Miami and co-director of the Centre for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing said: "It was just a matter of time that some of the oil would find its way to Texas."

About five gallons of tar balls were found on the Bolivar Peninsula, north east of Galveston, said Captain Marcus Woodring, the coastguard commander for the Houston/Galveston sector.

About two gallons were found on Sunday on the peninsula and Galveston Island, though tests have not yet confirmed their origin. Capt Woodring said the consistency of the tar balls indicated it was possible they could have been spread to Texas water by ships that had been in the spill.

Galveston mayor Joe Jaworski said he believed the tar balls were a

fluke rather than a sign of what's to come.

"This is good news," he said. "The water looks good. We're cautiously optimistic this is an anomaly."

The distance between the western reach of the tar balls in Texas and the most eastern reports of oil in Florida is about 550 miles.

The spill is reaching deeper into Louisiana. Oil was seen yesterday in the Rigolets, one of two waterways that connect the Gulf with Lake Pontchartrain, the large lake north of New Orleans.

Most of the offshore skimming operations in the Gulf have been halted by choppy seas and high winds. BP has now seen its costs from the spill reach 2.1bn, a figure that does not include a 13.2bn fund for damages.

Storms have not affected drilling work on a relief well that BP says is the best chance to plug the leak. It expects drilling to be finished by mid-August.