BP today suspended work on a relief well aiming to bore into its blown-out Gulf of Mexico oil well because of bad weather.
Spokesman Max McGahan said the company stopped drilling because the National Hurricane Center said the weather system had a 60 per cent chance of becoming a tropical depression in the next two days as it moves toward the Louisiana coast.
"We remain on location, but we've suspended drilling," Mr McGahan said.
"This could potentially delay the final portion of the relief well for two to three days," retired Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen told reporters.
The hurricane centre had given the system in the southeastern Gulf a 50-50 chance of developing. Computer models forecast it will move northwest, crossing the spill site before making landfall in southeast Louisiana.
The relief well is less than 100 feet from intercepting BP's Macondo well near its bottom about 13,000 feet beneath the seabed, BP said.
A plug has been placed in the relief well to keep it stable during the interruption, BP said.
Last week BP filled the well with drilling mud and then cement from the top, and the relief well's intercept at the bottom is intended to make sure the leak is permanently plugged.
Separately, a special judicial panel ruled that a New Orleans federal judge will oversee a swath of civil lawsuits brought by commercial fishermen and injured workers from the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20th, killing 11 workers and unleashing a nearly three-month undersea oil gusher.
Securities lawsuits thrown at BP by stockholders angered by its steep share price declines will be combined in Houston, the US Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation decided. The British energy giant has lost over a third of its market value since the explosion.
BP has reserved $32.2 billion to pay legal claims, but analysts said the eventual bill could run well above that.
Reuters