Who Owns the Oil Spilled in the Gulf of Mexico?

With news that fisherman and others trying to protect their own waterfront areas are being arrested if they are acting without authority from BP, on charges of stealing oil, it is worth asking the question "Who really owns the oil floating in the Gulf of Mexico?

Currently BP is asserting ownership of the oil. Yet I believe that a storng case could be made in a court, or a congressional action could be taken, that rules this oil to be abandoned property. Under the law of the sea, I believe that would ean that anyone who picked up the oil was entitled to it.

Such a clarification could open up new opportunities to those who seek to protect the shoreline areas and those opportunities might at least pay for themselves through revenues derived from sale of the oil. At the very least it would prevent the abuse of power currently being visited on folks who are just trying to protect their own property. There is no good reason to be arresting people who seek only to protect what they already have a legal right to protect in almost every other conceivable way.