ROBERT, La. — BP labored for a second day Thursday to choke off the leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
The company announced late in the day that it had suspended shooting heavy drilling mud into the blown-out well 5,000 feet underwater around midnight Wednesday so it could assess how the effort was working and bring in more materials.
Thursday evening, BP PLC said it had resumed the pumping procedure known as a top kill. Officials said it could be late today or the weekend before the company knows if it has cut off the oil that has been flowing for five weeks.
BP insisted the top kill was progressing as planned, though the company acknowledged drilling mud was escaping from the broken pipe along with the leaking crude.
“The fact that we had a bunch of mud going up the riser isn’t ideal but it’s not necessarily indicative of a problem,” said spokesman Tom Mueller.
Early Thursday, officials said the process was going well, but later in the day they announced pumping had been suspended 16 hours earlier. BP did not characterize the suspension as a setback, and Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, said the move did not indicate the top kill had failed.
“The good news is that they pumped in up to 65 barrels a minute and the thing didn’t blow apart,” Smith said. “It’s taken the most pressure it needs to see and it’s held together.”
The top kill is the latest in a string of attempts to stop the oil that has been spewing since the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20. Eleven workers were killed.
If the procedure works, BP will inject cement into the well to seal it permanently. If it doesn’t, the company has a number of backup plans. Either way, crews will continue to drill two relief wells, considered the only surefire way to stop the leak.
A top kill has never been attempted before so deep underwater.
