BP begins new strategy after 'top kill' failure

British Petroleum (BP) began working on a new plan to cap a leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after a three-day effort to stop the flow with a blast of pressurised fluids was unsuccessful.

The company started using high-horsepower pumps on May 26 to ram a mixture of mud-like drilling fluid and rubber scrap into the oil and gas that’s been gushing for more than five weeks, a process known as ‘top kill.’

At a press conference yesterday, the BP executive in charge of the spill response Doug Suttles said the top kill strategy didn’t work. BP will now try a containment device known as a lower-marine riser package cap, Suttles said.

“Obviously we’re very disappointed,” by the failed approach, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said at the press conference. She said efforts to stop the leak have been “a little bit of a roller coaster ride.”

At the outset of the top kill effort, BP put the chances of it succeeding at 60 per cent to 70 per cent. The company made three pumping attempts, injecting more than 30,000 barrels of mud into the hole, Suttles said.

“I am disappointed that this operation did not work,” BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said yesterday in a statement. “The team executed the operation perfectly, and the technology worked without a single hitch. We remain committed to doing everything we can to make this situation right.”

“Every day that this leak continues is an assault on the people of the Gulf Coast region, their livelihoods, and the natural bounty that belongs to all of us,” President Barack Obama said in a statement yesterday after the top kill effort failed. “It is as enraging as it is heartbreaking.”

Obama said May 28 his administration is exploring “any and all reasonable contingency plans” should BP fail to stop the spill, estimated to be more than twice as big as the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.

Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar will visit Houston later this week, while Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson will go to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the Joint Information Centre said yesterday in a statement.

BP didn’t provide an estimate of when the flow might be stopped with the new method. Installing the cap should take about four to seven days, and after that the company will begin installing a new blowout preventor, a series of valves designed to cut off the flow from the well, Suttles said.

The cap will attach to the top of the well’s existing blowout preventor and will then funnel oil and gas into a pipe that extends to a ship on the surface.

After the attachment of the lower-marine riser package cap, BP plans to install the new blowout preventor on top of the existing one, Suttles said. BP will then try to use the valves on the new blowout preventor to stop the flow.