After failure after failure, oil giant BP is trying a new approach to slow the leak of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, but concedes this latest attempt -- even if it works -- won't capture all the crude fouling the water.
The approach now underway is called the Lower Marine Riser Package Cap. It involves using undersea robots to saw through and remove a damaged pipe leading out from the crippled well, 1,500 metres beneath the surface. The robots would then cap the pipe with a funnel-like device which would force the oil into a new riser, bringing it up to a ship on the surface.
The operation began Saturday and could take four to seven days. BP's managing director, Bob Dudley, says it will be the end of the week before it's known whether the plan has worked.
Washington's top energy adviser, Carol Browner, is not optimistic it will. He says scientists are even worried the gusher will grow by as much as 20 per cent from the time the pipe is cut to when a containment valve is in place. But BP executive Doug Suttles says the plan isn't expected to cause the flow to increase significantly.
BP says the operation is meant to be a temporary stop and that the real hope lies in two relief wells still being drilled. They will divert the oil before it reaches the broken well. But that long-term solution won't be ready until at least August.
BP admitted Saturday its previous "top kill" approach to plug the flow by pumping mud and concrete into the broken pipe failed. The company said it was unable to overwhelm the broken well, even after three days of pumping, although it says it was able to somewhat slow the flow.
The failure of that plan has effectively ended whatever optimism may have been left among Gulf Coast residents that the mammoth spill will end any time soon.
Oil washes ashore every day and crude-coated birds have become a frequent sight.
Deep in the ocean, no one's sure what the oil is doing to fish and plant life. Scientists from several universities have reported large underwater plumes of oil stretching for kilometres, hundreds of metres beneath the surface. But BP scientists have disputed those findings, saying they've found no such underwater oil clouds.
Frustration has grown as the leaked oil closes more beaches and washes up in sensitive marshland in Louisiana and elsewhere. Oyster beds and shrimp nurseries face certain death, according to fishermen who see no end in sight to the catastrophe that's keeping their boats idle.
Perhaps most alarming of all, hurricane season is scheduled to start Tuesday, June 1. That brings the very real possibility that winds will whip up the waters and bring oil-soaked waves ashore, coating areas much farther inland.
As the disaster stretches into its seventh week, U.S. President Barack Obama has come under intense fire for the way he's handled the disaster, with some saying he was too slow to react and deferred too readily to BP.
Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University in Washington, says from the start, Obama failed to give a great sense of urgency to what could become one of the greatest ecological disasters in modern history.
"He should have been down there immediately. He should have had a team of the very best government scientists and scientists in the private world advising and dealing with this from the start," Lichtman told CTV's Canada AM Monday.
"There was absolutely no reason to leave this entirely in the hands of BP, whose negligence may well have contributed to this disaster and whose reports on it have been anything but reliable."
The spill, which began on April 20, is already the worst in U.S. history. It has dumped between 68 million litres and 150 million litres into the Gulf, according to government estimates. That easily surpasses the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster and the oil is continuing to spill.
BP's total financial cost of the response to the disaster now stands at US$930 million.
With files from The Associated Press
