NEW ORLEANS — Underpromising with hopes of overdelivering, BP said Sunday it is making progress on what could prove its most effective effort yet to contain the Gulf of Mexico oil leak but cautioned that the verdict could be several days away.
A new cap being placed atop the gusher is intended to provide a tight seal and might eventually allow the oil giant to capture all the crude leaking from the well for the first time since an April 20 oil-rig explosion set off the environmental crisis. But several prior failed attempts to stop the leak have made BP PLC careful to keep expectations grounded.
“We’re pleased with our progress,” said BP senior vice president Kent Wells, who hastened to add that the operation was expected to last up to six more days.
Asked during a conference call whether the new cap and collection efforts would end the spilling of oil into the gulf, Wells said only that BP will capture all the oil “at some point.”
Officials won’t be satisfied that the cap is working until they’ve run tests on whether it can withstand the tremendous pressure of oil pushing up from below the sea floor, Wells said.
“We’ve tried to work out as many of the bugs as we can,” he said.
The well has been gushing largely unchecked since an old, leaky cap was removed from the wellhead Saturday to make way for the new one. Between 88 million and 174 million gallons of crude have already spilled into the gulf, according to federal estimates.
Wary residents along the gulf reserved judgment and said the damage done to the environment, fishing and tourism will haunt the region for a long time.
“At this point, there have been so many ups and downs, disappointments, that everybody down here is like, ‘We’ll believe it when we see it,’ ” said Keith Kennedy, a charter-boat captain in Venice, La.
Robotic submarines finished removing a busted piece of pipe that was bolted around the leak at about 3 a.m. Sunday. That paved the way for the installation of a pipelike connector called a flange spool that will sit on top of the spewing well bore. The new cap would be mounted on top of that connector and have flexible pipes leading up to surface ships.
Obama kept up to date
The work was being closely monitored at the White House, where President Barack Obama is briefed several times a day, adviser David Axelrod said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“We have every reason to believe that this will work,” he said.
Ultimately, four vessels collecting oil would have a rough capacity of about 2.5 million to 3.4 million gallons a day — enough to capture all the oil leaking, if estimates are right. Getting all vessels on the task will take two to three weeks.
Hurricane season, which lasts through November, could interfere. There are no storms forecast now, but if one blows through, the ships collecting the oil may have to leave, and crude would spew into the water again for days.
If the new cap is a complete success in stopping the leak, that will be a first.
In May, BP tried to drop a four-story, 100-ton steel-and-concrete box on the leak but abandoned it when it was encased by icelike crystals. That was followed by a mile-long siphon tube designed to suck up oil escaping the leak. That, in turn, was scrapped after it managed to suck up only about 900,000 gallons after roughly a week of operation.
The most anticipated effort was the so-called “top kill,” in which mud and cement were pumped down from above the leak. After about three days of the strategy, BP announced May 29 it had failed.
Then came the cap that was removed Saturday. That device didn’t form a perfect seal on the jagged pipe that was cut to make room for it, and the inexact fit meant that it was able to collect only 1 million gallons or so of oil a day.
The new, tighter cap is not intended to be the permanent fix to the problem.
Relief wells are being dug for the permanent fix, a “bottom kill” in which heavy drilling mud and cement are pumped in from below the broken wellhead.
The effort to drill relief wells was moving ahead of schedule, Wells said Sunday. BP and government officials have said the wells are expected to be completed sometime around mid-August.
The new cap, or “Top Hat 10,” weighs about 150,000 pounds. It is designed to fully seal the leak and provide connections for new vessels on the surface to collect oil. The cap has valves that can restrict the flow of oil and shut it in, if it can withstand the enormous pressure.
