Thursday, May 6, 2010

Oil Spill: One Well Capped, but Crude Still Leaking Freely in Gulf Disaster

BP managed to cap one of three leaking wells deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday night, but with two others still spilling oil, the repair will not decrease the flow of crude into Gulf waters.

"It doesn't lessen the flow, it just simplifies the number of leak points they have to address," Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class David Mosley told the AP.

The oil company thinks the best short-term solution is to lower a 100-ton containment dome 5,000 feet deep to enshroud the leaking wells, which have been uncapped since a BP oil rig blew up on April 20, killing 11 workers and sinking the rig. The company hopes to deploy the dome on Thursday.

Some 210,000 gallons of oil have been gushing daily into the Gulf, forming a huge slick and also breaking up into smaller black globs. Little of the mess had hit shore as of Wednesday

No comments:

Post a Comment