No timetable to reopen Mississippi after spill

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Coast Guard closed the Mississippi River between markers 776 and 769, just north of Memphis, Tennessee, due to a hazardous material spill late Monday, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

The spokesman said it was unclear how long the river would be closed.

Coast Guard officials were on scene assessing plans to clean up the spill and remove remaining cargo from a barge that was punctured in a collision with another barge tow, spilling acrylonitrile into the river.

Oil traders did not expect the incident to have any effect on crude movement up the river unless the closure was prolonged.

The closure also had little effect on corn and soybean barge shipments, although it could, if it lasts a while, delaying cargo transits, commodities traders said.

"I think this should be short lived and doubt it will have much affect, unless it lasts a lot longer than we'd expect," said one crude oil trader.

A total of 36 vessels were queuing upstream and downstream of the accident scene late Tuesday, awaiting reopening of the river, the Coast Guard said.

Another vessel was expected to arrive Tuesday night to begin the lightering process to remove remaining cargo from the damaged barge. The leak has been stopped.

A longer-than-expected outage could mean more crude draws in the U.S. Gulf coast, another trader said.

Valero Energy Corp operates a 195,000 barrel per day refinery in Memphis.

"At this time there is no impact to operations at the Memphis refinery," said Bill Day, a company spokesman.

The incident began at about 9 p.m. CDT on Monday (0100 GMT Tuesday), when a collision occurred between the Merrick Jones, a 128-foot (39-meter) towing vessel pushing 26 barges, and the Dixie Express, an 87-foot towing barge pushing two barges of acrylonitrile.

An unknown amount of acrylonitrile, which is both toxic and flammable, was released into the water after one of the barges being pushed by the Dixie Express was damaged in the incident.

(Reporting by Janet McGurty and Joshua Schneyer in New York and Bruce Nichols in Houston; Editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid)