The Coast Guard reopened the Mississippi River to limited ship traffic Friday, but port officials say it will take days to clear up to 200 ships idled by a massive oil spill near New Orleans.

AP

The barge that was split in two in the collision.

A 100-mile stretch of the river has been closed since Wednesday, when a barge split open in a collision with the Liberian-flagged tanker Tintomara. Roughly 419,000 gallons spilled into the fast-flowing waterway to commerce, and crews have sopped up about 11,000 -- just a fraction of what the barge was carrying.

The first ship to leave the mouth of the river, the Overseas New York, is bound for refineries upriver from New Orleans, said Capt. Lincoln Stroh. The ships will move based on economic priorities, Stroh said. The Mississippi between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is dotted with oil refineries and huge grain operations.

Grain barges heading to the American heartland and a 2,000-passenger cruise ship set to dock in New Orleans Friday night were among the vessels blocked by the closure.

The shutdown could cost shippers millions of dollars in lost commerce, said John Hyatt, vice president of Irwin Brown Co., a New Orleans-based freight forwarder.

State authorities were optimistic environmental damage could be contained. Divers were inspecting the barge, which is wedged against the Mississippi River bridge. Officials said they believe little fuel is left, and say they don't think it is a danger to navigation nor a hazard to the structure of the bridge.

The spill was the largest since a tanker ran aground about 40 miles south of New Orleans, dumping more than half a million gallons of crude oil on the Mississippi. That spill closed about 26 miles of the river. Also Friday, residents sued the owners and operators of the vessels that collided, alleging in U.S. district court that they have been exposed to fumes from the fuel oil wafting off the river in the worst spill on the Mississippi since November 2000.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. Authorities say there wasn't a properly licensed pilot aboard the tugboat towing the barge.

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Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman, Becky Bohrer and

Cain Burdeau in New Orleans contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)