NEW ORLEANS — The Coast Guard discovered Saturday that oil is leaking from the damaged well that fed a massive rig that exploded this week off Louisiana’s coast, while bad weather halted efforts to clean up the mess that threatens the area’s fragile marine ecosystem. As recently as Friday, the Coast Guard said no oil appeared to escaping from the well head on the ocean floor. Rear Adm. Mary Landry said the leak was a new discovery but could have begun when the rig sank on Thursday, two days after the initial explosion. ‘This is a very serious spill, absolutely,’ Landry said. Coast Guard and company officials estimate that as much as 1,000 barrels of oil is escaping each day after studying information from remotely operated vehicles and the size of the oil slick surrounding the blast site. The rainbow-colored sheen of oil stretched 20 miles by 20 miles on Saturday – about 25 times larger than it appeared to be a day earlier, Landry said. Eleven workers are still missing from the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank Thursday about 50 miles from Louisiana’s coast. They are presumed dead, and the search for them was called […]