BP lowers a cap onto leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well

4 June 2010 4 June 2010

BonTrade

Oil company BP las lowered a capping device on to a leaking oil well, in its latest attempt to stem the flow into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill at the doomed Deepwater Horizon site.

Video footage showed the cap lowered into place against pressure from escaping oil and gas. It will be some time before it is known whether the move has worked. The US Coast Guard said the cap would only be a temporary, partial fix.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has strongly criticised BP. He said he had not seen “the kind of rapid response” to the disaster that he would have liked. In an interview with CNN, he said BP had already “felt his anger” over the spill.

He is due to visit the gulf on Friday – his third trip to the area since the leak began six weeks ago – after postponing a trip to Australia, Indonesia and Guam for the second time. BP chief Tony Hayward said the results of the capping effort should be known on Friday.

However, BP has said it does not expect to be able to fully halt the oil flow until August, when two relief wells will be completed.

In the first phase of the latest effort to contain the spill, robots cut a leaking pipe. BP then used giant shears manipulated by undersea robots to snip off the end of the pipe, after a diamond-edged saw failed to do the job.

A funnel-like cap has been placed on top, which if successful, would improve oil recovery and BP would hope to collect the oil on a surface ship above the well. The US Coast Guard said the placement of the cap was a postive development, but that it would be “some time before we can confirm that this method will work and to what extent it will mitigate the release of oil into the environment”.

Mr Hayward acknowledged that what engineers were doing had never been tried before, and said there were many challenges ahead. BP estimates that the disaster has so far cost the company about $990m.