BP to test oil spill cap; US pushes drilling curbs
British oil major BP prepared on Tuesday to try sealing off its runaway well with a new cap that it says could for the first time in 12 weeks finally arrest the flow of oil spewing from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.
BP has suffered numerous setbacks in its struggle to control the 86 day old gusher that stands as the worst offshore oil spill in US history. And BP cautioned that tests of its latest containment system were not sure to succeed.
But BP shares, battered for weeks as damage to the US Gulf Coast economy and cleanup costs mounted, surged nearly 8 per cent in New York on Monday by promising developments at sea and by news that US energy company Apache Corp and other bidders were in talks to buy up to US $10 billion worth of BP assets.
The potential breakthrough in efforts to fully contain BP’s ruptured wellhead also came as the Obama administration issued a revised moratorium on deep-water oil drilling that critics called a mere repackaging of an earlier ban struck down by the courts. The prospect of legal battles over the administration’s bid to suspend deep-sea energy exploration in the Gulf already has had a chilling effect on drilling, putting tens of thousands of jobs at risk, industry officials and analysts said.
Even as the seven-member panel began its investigation into the cause and effects of the spill, BP reported a potential turning point in the crisis. Hours after starting up a new oil-siphoning system, BP said Monday night it had installed a 40-ton containment cap atop its leaking wellhead a mile underwater — a device larger and tighter-fitting than the one it removed on Friday. Crude oil continued to pour into the sea for the time being, but BP said it planned to begin testing the new cap, and the internal pressure of the well, on Tuesday by closing off valves on the device to constrict the flow of oil.
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