Gulf oil spill gets new cap

BP robots attached a new, tighter-fitting cap on top of the gushing Gulf of Mexico oil leak Monday, raising hopes that the crude could be kept from polluting the water for the first time in nearly three months.

Placing the cap on top of the leak was the climax of two days of delicate preparation work and a day of slowly lowering it into position 1.6 kilometres below the sea. The capping project — akin to building an underwater Lego tower — is just a temporary fix, but is the oil giant's best hope for containing the spill.

The next unknown is whether the 5½-metre-high, 68,000-kilogram metal stack of pipes and valves will work.

BP plans to start tests Tuesday, gradually shutting valves to see if the oil stops or if it starts leaking from another part of the well.

People who live on the coast have been skeptical that BP can deliver on its promise to control the spill, but the news was still welcome.

Dwayne Touchet, a 44-year-old shrimper from Welsh, La., said he was relieved to hear the cap was on and can only pray that it works. Touchet is working in the Vessels of Opportunity program, in which BP employs local boat owners and fisherman who are out of work because of the spill.

'It's not over'

"It's not over; there's still a lot of oil to clean up. We don't know how it will affect it [the water] in the years to come, all we can do is trust in the Lord," he said.

Around 6:30 p.m. local time, live video streams trained on the wellhead showed the cap being slowly lowered into place, 11 hours after BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said the company was close to putting the seal in place. BP officials said the device was attached at around 7 p.m.

The cap will be tested and monitored to see if it can withstand pressure from oil and gas starting Tuesday morning for six to 48 hours, said Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, commander of the national response to the incident. "Getting there," Allen wrote in a status update on his Facebook page shortly after the cap landed on the well.

The cap will be tested by closing three separate valves that fit together snugly like pairs of fists, choking off the oil and blocking it from entering the Gulf.

Gradual stop

BP doesn't want the flow to stop instantaneously, said Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of geosciences programs at the University of Houston. Shutting the oil off too quickly could cause another explosion, he said.

"Rather than like a train running into a brick wall, it'll be more like putting the brakes on slowly," he said. "That's what they're aiming for. You can keep the brakes on and everyone arrives alive, or you hit the wall and have big problems."

Engineers will be watching pressure readings. High pressure is good, because it would mean the leak has been contained inside the wellhead machinery. But if readings are lower than expected, that could mean there is another leak elsewhere in the well.

"Another concern right now would be how much pressure the well can take," and whether intense pressure would further damage the well, said Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute.

Even if the cap works, the blown-out well will still be leaking. But the newer, tighter cap will enable BP to capture all the oil, or help funnel it up to ships on the surface if necessary.

One of those ships, the Helix Producer, began operating Monday and should be up to its capacity of collecting roughly 3.8 million litres of oil a day within a few days, BP's Suttles said.

No relief

A permanent fix will have to wait until one of two relief wells being drilled reaches the broken well, which will then be plugged up with drilling mud and cement. That may not happen until mid-August.

Meanwhile, the Barack Obama administration issued a revised moratorium on deepwater drilling Monday to replace the one struck down in court as heavy-handed. The new ban, in effect until Nov. 30, does not appear to deviate much from the original moratorium, as it still targets deepwater drilling operators while defining them in a different way.

Work on the new capping operation began Saturday with the removal of a leaky cap that captured about 3.8 million of the 5.7 million to 9.5 million litres of oil the government estimates is spilling from the well every day.

Residents anxious

Gulf residents closely watched the operation, knowing the damage already done to the biologically rich region and the coast's two leading industries, fishing and tourism.

"I think we're going to see oil out in the Gulf of Mexico, roaming around, taking shots at us, for the next year, maybe two," said Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana's oil-stained Plaquemines Parish. "If you told me today no more oil was coming ashore, we've still got a massive cleanup ahead."

As of Monday, on the 83rd day of the disaster, as much as 666 million litres of oil had poured into the Gulf, according to government estimates. The spill started April 20 when the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased by BP from Transocean Ltd., exploded and burned, killing 11 workers. It sank two days later.