BP today said efforts to seal off the ruptured oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico could take three months.
The oil giant has begun work on a relief well to intercept the leaking well and permanently seal it but this could take “some three months”, the firm said.
An estimated 7.3 million gallons of oil are estimated to have spilled since the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank 60km offshore of Louisiana and Mississippi on April 20th, killing 11 workers.
A huge slick, some 200km long and 100km wide, is now threatening the coast of Louisiana with US president Barack Obama warning of a “potentially unprecedented environmental disaster”.
BP has said it would pay compensation for legitimate claims for property damage, personal injury and commercial losses.
Mr Obama visited Louisiana on Sunday to inspect the efforts to combat the leak. “BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill," he said.
BP chief executive Tony Hayward stressed today that the company was not to blame for the oil spill, which drained $32bn from the company's stock market value, with the clean-up, lawsuits and fines likely to cost the company billions more.
“In terms of the responsibility, I want to be very clear about this, this was not our accident but it is our responsibility to deal with the leak and to clean up the oil,” Mr Hayward told the BBC today.
“We take that very seriously and that is what we are going to do. At the moment what we are focusing on is eliminating the leak, containing the oil on the surface, and if necessary, defending the shoreline.”
He said the equipment that failed on the rig and led to the spill belonged to owner Transocean, not BP, which operated the rig.
Guy Cantwell, a Transocean spokesman, said: “We will await all the facts before drawing conclusions and we will not speculate.”
A board investigating the oil leak and explosion plans to hold its first public hearing in about two weeks.
In a news conference about the spill yesterday, a BP spokesman said that bad weather hampered offshore clean-up attempts, with skimming fleets facing six metre high waves. He said that skimming ships and flights deploying the dispersant were suspended due to the weather.
The BP official said that another attempt to stem the oil and gas reaching the surface began on Sunday afternoon. He said crews were attempting to drill down to 5,000 metres so they could inject drilling fluids and cement to stop the flow.
BP is working on a funnel to help contain the ruptured well. The funnel is huge iron box that resembles a primitive space rocket with a hole on top to channel oil through a pipe from the sea floor to the surface where it can be collected on a barge.
In theory, the system should collect 85 per cent of the oil rising from the sea floor, but BP has never deployed the structure at such a depth and the company cannot guarantee it will function correctly.
Citing the Gulf of Mexico oil slick, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said yesterday that he no longer will support a plan to expand drilling off California's coast.
The Republican governor had been calling for more oil drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara. Drilling would raise money for the state government, which faces a $20 billion budget shortfall, but the idea has met determined resistance in the Democrat-led legislature.
Speaking at a media event regarding the state's preparations for California's fire season, Mr Schwarzenegger said television footage of the oil slick moving toward the Gulf Coast prompted his change of heart. "I am withdrawing my support," Schwarzenegger said.