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Day 40: BP 'top kill' still not stopping flow
Outside expert: Pressure from well is stronger than heavy mud

Jae C. Hong / AP
updated 1:40 p.m. CT, Sat., May 29, 2010

ROBERT, La. - BP said Saturday that its latest bid to plug the worst oil spill in U.S. history still hadn't worked and outside experts suggested any progress was incremental at best.

BP PLC chief operating officer Doug Suttles told reporters in Grand Isle, Louisiana, that the effort known as a "top kill" has not stopped the flow of oil, and that he doesn't know if the risky maneuver will succeed. He said the company was already preparing its next option to cap the well.

A live feed of the leak showed preparations Saturday morning for BP's next step. An underwater robot gripped a saw near the bent and leaking pipe atop a failed blowout preventer, where BP aims to slice off the pipe and place a cap and seal over the opening.

That operation is known as the lower marine riser package cap, and Suttles confirmed that BP had been preparing for that step "all along."

"If we have to go to it, we can do it as quickly as possible," he said.

BP has said previously the company was "planning in parallel," or getting ready for other options while working on the top kill — the injection of heavy fluid and materials to plug the well.

While Suttles acknowledged that the amount of oil spewing from the leak has not changed, he did not go so far as to say the top kill has failed. "We've said all along this may or may not be successful," Suttles said.

The disaster entered its 40th day on Saturday with Gulf Coast residents clinging to the tenuous hope that BP's complicated "top kill" operation will plug the gushing well.

The tricky maneuver started on Wednesday. BP had said repeatedly that it needed another 24 to 48 hours to know whether it would succeed, but backed off of giving time estimates on Saturday.

Engineers may not know until at least Sunday if the fix is successful, and progress was difficult to measure from BP's "spillcam" of mud, gas and oil billowing from the seafloor. Americans have been hypnotized as they watched for any sign of success.

Watching for black, white, brown
Scientists say the images may offer clues to whether BP is getting the upper hand in its struggle to contain the oil, said Tony Wood, director of the National Spill Control School at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. If the stuff coming out of the pipe is jet black, it is mostly oil and BP is losing. If it is whitish, it is mostly gas and BP is also losing.

If it is muddy brown, as it was much of Friday, that may be a sign that BP is starting to win, he said. That "may in fact mean that there's mud coming up and mud coming down as well," which is better than oil coming out, Wood said.

The company, however, has cautioned that it's difficult to gauge progress from the choppy video 5,000 feet undersea. Officials also have warned people not to read too much into any changes they might see on the live video feed, saying it also is not indicative of overall progress.

Philip Johnson, an engineering professor at the University of Alabama, said the camera appeared to show mostly drilling mud leaking from the well Friday morning, and two of the leaks appeared a little smaller than in the past, suggesting the top kill "may have had a slight but not dramatic effect."

But Bob Bea, a professor of engineering at University of California at Berkeley who has studied offshore drilling for 55 years, said late Friday that what he saw didn't look promising.

He likened the effort to pushing food into a reluctant baby's mouth — it only works if the force of the stuff going down is more than the force of what's coming up.

"It's obvious that the baby's spitting the baby food back" because the pressure from the well is stronger, Bea said.


The top kill operation began Wednesday, with BP pumping heavy drilling mud into the blown-out well in an effort to choke off the source of the spill which has released far more than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster did off the Alaska coast. Even in the best-case scenario under by the government's estimate, at least 18 million gallons has leaked so far. The worst case could exceed 40 million gallons of oil.

BP has brought in about 2.5 million gallons of drilling mud for the top kill. BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said Friday the procedure was going basically as planned. The pumping has stopped several times, but he said that was not unusual.

He said the company has also shot in assorted junk, including metal pieces and rubber balls, which seemed to be helping to counter pressure from the well.

A top kill has never been attempted 5,000 feet underwater, and public fascination is high.

BP, under pressure from Congress, made available a live video feed of what is going on underwater.

PBS' "Newshour" converted the video feed to make it work on most Web browsers and has made that available for free. More than 3,000 websites have linked to it. On Thursday alone, more than one million people watched the video through that PBS feed, said Anne Bell, the show's spokeswoman. Subscribers to the "Newshour" channel on YouTube doubled in 24 hours, she said.

Many found it hypnotic.

"It made me wonder how I use energy and if this situation could teach us how much energy we use ourselves," said Jeb Banner, 38, a web design and marketing company owner in Indianapolis who has been looking at the feed every hour or so since before the top kill started. "It felt like a historic moment."

BP says the best way to stop the oil for good is a relief well, but it won't be complete until August.

Concocting revenge fantasies has become a popular sport.

A Louisiana resident suggested in a letter to the Times Picayune newspaper that BP executives be tarred in spilled oil, rolled in blackened pelican feathers and sent to the guillotine so their severed heads could be used in a "junk shot" to clog the well.

The creators of the "B-Pee Day" Facebook page urged readers to urinate on BP gas stations, declaring "They leaked on us, it's time to take a leak on them."


The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37413783/ns/gulf_oil_spill/