NEW ORLEANS — BP’s next effort to contain the oil spewing from a damaged well in the Gulf could result in a temporary 20 percent increase in the flow, White House energy adviser Carol Browner said Sunday.
Meanwhile, BP’s chief executive disputed scientists’ claims of large oil plumes suspended underwater in the Gulf of Mexico and said the company has largely narrowed the focus of its cleanup to surface slicks rolling into Louisiana’s coastal marshes.
An estimated 18 to 40 million gallons of oil have been unleashed since BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform exploded and sank last month, killing 11. With the undersea leak now expected to continue spewing oil until August, the cleanup effort could last for months or even years.
BP’s latest attempt to stem the leak involves cutting and removing a damaged pipe.
Browner said in a news release Sunday that government scientists believe the oil gusher would increase as much as 20 percent from the time the pipe is cut to when a containment valve is in place.
BP, however, has said it didn’t expect a significant increase in flow from the cutting and capping plan. The latest operation began Saturday and is expected to take four to seven days.
The last attempt, a “top kill” — using a remote robotic arm to stuff drilling mud, golf balls and assorted debris into the gash in the seafloor — didn’t work.
“We failed to wrestle this beast to the ground yesterday,” said BP Managing Director Bob Dudley, doing the rounds of the Sunday talk shows.
BP said it would focus on containment rather than plugging the undersea puncture, effectively redirecting the mess it made rather than stopping it. Relief wells, supposed to be a better long-term solution, won’t be finished for at least two months.
BP hopes to saw through a pipe leading out from the well and cap it with a funnel-like device using the same remotely guided undersea robots that have failed in other tries to stop the gusher.
The cap, however, would not prevent all oil from escaping. BP officials have only pledged it will capture a majority of the oil.
“If they can’t get that valve on, things will get much worse,” said Philip Johnson, an engineering professor at the University of Alabama.
If the effort fails, BP may try installing a blowout preventer on top of the existing one.
Also Sunday, Tony Hayward said the company’s sampling showed “no evidence” that oil was suspended in large masses beneath the surface. The BP chief executive didn’t elaborate on how the testing was done.
Hayward said that oil’s natural tendency is to rise to the surface, and any oil found underwater was in the process of working its way up.
“The oil is on the surface,” Hayward said. “There aren’t any plumes.”
Scientists from several universities have reported plumes of what appears to be oil far from the site of BP’s leaking wellhead, which is more than 5,000 beneath the surface.
Those findings — from the University of South Florida, the University of Georgia, Southern Mississippi University and other institutions — were based on video images and initial observations of water samples taken in the Gulf over the last several weeks. They continue to be analyzed.
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