By Anna Driver
VENICE, Louisiana (Reuters) - BP <:BP.LO:>began capturing some oil spewing from a 46-day gusher on Friday after installing a containment cap atop a ruptured Gulf of Mexico well as President Barack Obama was set to make his third trip to the area since the disaster.
The National Park Service reported that oil sheen and tar balls have washed ashore on barrier islands off Pensacola on the northwest Florida coast. This was the first official confirmation of oil suspected to be from the spill.
BP Plc executives sought to reassure jittery investors with a conference call but put off a decision on whether to suspend paying its next quarterly dividend as some U.S. politicians had demanded.
BP shares had been up 4 percent but the gains were pared back in Friday's session after company CEO Tony Hayward issued the statement.
The U.S. Coast Guard said the containment cap placed atop the gusher a mile deep beneath the Gulf's surface was now collecting about 1,000 barrels a day.
The collection rate is a small portion of 19,000 barrels per day that the U.S. government has estimated could be gushing from the well.
The captured amount should increase as BP closes vents to trap more oil, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen told reporters in a conference call.
"Sometime later today we'll probably be able to get ... an approximation of how much oil we are capturing," Allen said.
Earlier on Friday, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told U.S. networks the containment cap "should work" by capturing upward of 90 percent of the gushing oil.
Pressure had been building on BP to suspend dividend payments, which total $10.5 billion a year, and divert cash to dealing with the spill and clean-up.
The BP statement was murky on the issue.
"Future decisions on the quarterly dividend will be made by the Board, as they always have been, on the basis of the circumstances at the time. All factors will be considered and the decision taken in the long-term interests of the shareholders," the statement said.
Confronting one of the biggest tests of his presidency as his party girds for tough congressional elections in November, Obama called off a trip to Australia and Indonesia set for this month to focus on the oil spill.
He was making his third visit to the Gulf. The president has faced criticism as to whether he is doing enough or showing enough emotion in dealing with the crisis. Obama told CNN's "Larry King Live" on Thursday that "venting and yelling at people" was not the job he was hired to do.
(Additional reporting by Verna Gates on Dauphin Island and Michael Peltier in Tallahassee, Florida, Chris Baltimore and Kristen Hays in Houston and Deborah Zabarenko in Washington; Writing by Steve Holland; editing by Alan Elsner)
