Cleanup process continues

Residents of the US Gulf Coast braced for more oil from a ruptured BP Plc well to hit their beaches on Sunday as oil washed ashore at Panama City, a popular Florida tourist destination.

To minimize the leak's environmental impact, BP is capturing as much as 24,000 barrels (1 million gallons/3.81 million liters) a day of crude using two containment systems but that is a fraction of the 35,000-60,000 barrels the US Coast Guard says is pouring from the well.

BP restarted its containment effort on Saturday after one system was shut down for 10 hours to fix a technical issue and to let a storm pass. It was the latest in a series of problems to bedevil attempts to halt the oil flow now in its 62nd day.