HOUSTON – BP said yesterday its new cap has stopped the oil that has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico for three months.
It hopes to maintain that situation until a relief well can permanently seal the leak next month.
The British energy giant, which cut off the flow of oil on Thursday when it began to test the structural integrity of its blown-out Macondo well, expressed growing confidence the well was intact.
The worst oil spill in US history has caused an economic and environmental disaster in five states along the gulf coast, and complicated traditionally close ties with Britain. Those concerns are certain to be on the agenda when British prime minister David Cameron meets President Barack Obama in Washington tomorrow.
“Right now there is no target set to open the well back up to flow,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, told reporters. “We’re hopeful that if the encouraging signs continue that we’ll be able to continue the integrity test all the way to the point that we get the well killed.” The plan had been to complete the test and then for BP to reattach pipes to the capping equipment and resume siphoning oil to ships on the surface. Now the company hopes to keep the well shut until the relief well is completed in August and the leak is sealed off.
When BP choked off the gusher 1 mile (1.6km) below the ocean’s surface with a new, tighter-fitting containment cap, it was the first time oil had not been spewing into the gulf since an April 20th explosion on a rig killed 11 workers and triggered the disaster.
Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the government’s spill response, said on Saturday the pressure test was intended to clarify options for sealing off the well in the event of a hurricane.
Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana, said the new cap was good news after a losing battle to try to clean up oil hitting fragile marshlands, while more of it lapped ashore.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said issues of cleaning up and recovery are far from over. “It’s just a beginning. We have a very, very long way to go,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union show.
Mr Obama’s public approval ratings have slipped as the crisis has dragged on, but some analysts said the well capping would help him by removing a symbol of government powerlessness.
The president welcomed the success of the new cap, but cautioned there was much work to be done on a permanent solution.
The crisis took on a new twist as the British government said there was no evidence of a connection between BP and last year’s release of a Libyan man convicted of the 1988 airline bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, mostly Americans.
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a July 29th hearing on possible ties between BP and the release of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi.
BP has said it lobbied the British government about slow progress in resolving a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya in 2007, but said it was not involved in Megrahi’s release. – (Reuters)