Biden visited the New Orleans disaster command center and a seafood wholesaler and was set to travel to the Florida panhandle, where the slick has forced authorities to close down some of the area's iconic white sand beaches.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican who has been highly critical of the federal response, met Biden at the New Orleans airport.

The vice-president, a Democrat, greeted him with a handshake and then wrapped his arm around Jindal's back as they chatted on the tarmac.

The Miami-based National Hurricane Center said Tropical Storm Alex was expected to reach hurricane strength later Tuesday and strike along the Mexican border with Texas Wednesday night.

While oil cleanup crews will likely be spared a direct hit, strong winds from Alex are churning up waves large enough to make it too rough for crews to attach a third vessel to siphon oil from a containment cap some 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface.

"We're going to have to stop preparations for the Helix Producer," US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the response efforts, said on Monday.

That vessel was set to increase the capacity to gather the gushing oil to between 40,000 and 50,000 barrels per day by early July.

The current containment system is capturing nearly 25,000 of the estimated 30,000 to 60,000 barrels of crude spewing out of the ruptured well every day.

That could all end up gushing directly into the sea if Alex changes path and threatens a more direct hit on the spill site some 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana.

Even the threat of gale force winds -- upward of 45 miles per hour -- will suffice to force drilling and containment ships to withdraw from the spill site, Allen told reporters.

Evacuations must begin 120 hours in advance, and operations will be shut down for about two weeks to "take down the equipment, move it off to a safe place, bring it back and reestablish drilling," Allen said.

That would delay the completion of relief wells designed to permanently plug the well until September, and would drastically increase the flow of oil still gushing into the sea some 71 days after the deadly explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

The rough seas could also push the oil deeper into fragile coastal wetlands and has already shifted parts of the slick closer to sensitive areas in Florida and Louisiana.

At 1800 GMT, the US National Hurricane Center said Alex was picking up speed as it moved in a northwesterly direction at about 13 miles (21 kilometers) per hour.

The storm was about 320 miles (515 kilometers) southeast of Brownsville Texas, packing maximum sustained winds of 70 miles (110 kilometers) per hour.

Tropical storm force winds currently "extend outward up to 140 miles (220 kilometers)" to the northeast from the storm center, the center said.

The storm earlier dumped heavy rains across the Yucatan peninsula, having killed at least 10 people in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Meanwhile, a frustrated former US president Bill Clinton interviewed on CNN said blowing up the well "may become necessary" and expressed concern about the ultimate success of the two relief wells currently being drilled.

"This is a geological monster," Clinton said.

"You could stop that well, but what else might you do that might upset the ecostructure of the Gulf?"

But BP vice president Kent Wells said the energy giant has a "high degree of confidence in the relief wells."

The first well, which stretches over 16,700 feet (5,090 meters), is now only 20 horizontal feet (six meters) away from the original well, Wells told reporters.

Engineers will drill parallel to the original well for about another 1,000 feet (305 meters) before trying to cut into it and block the flow of oil.

"I'm really confident in the team's chance of being successful here," Wells said.

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