Nearly three months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and triggered one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. After a whole litany of failed efforts to cap the leak, BP’s latest effort seems to have finally stopped the flow of oil into the gulf completely.
Seems is clearly still the operative word when it comes to hopes that the spill is finally contained.
“It is a positive sign, still in the testing phase,” President Obama said in a news conference yesterday. “We’ll have more to say about it tomorrow.” And BP’s COO, Doug Suttles, echoed the President’s retrained optomism.
“We need to be cautious right now,” he said. “It’s a great sight, but we’re far from the finish line.”
This cap is far from a permanent solution – the relief wells that the company has been working on since the days after the explosion are the only way to ease the pressure in the well enough to allow for a permanent plug, and they are not yet completed. If this cap does, in fact, succeed in keeping more oil from entering the gulf until those wells are finished, however, it will be an important step forward. The company has struggled so long with finding a stop-gap measure because they’ve basically had to invent a solution from thin air.
“The sealing cap system never before has been deployed at these depths or under these conditions, and its efficiency and ability to contain the oil and gas cannot be assured,” the company said earlier today, before they announced that the cap seemed to be working.
BP made it clear that it was still testing the well’s integrity, and would be doing so for 6 to 48 hours “even if no oil is released during the test, this will not be an indication that oil and gas flow from the well bore has been permanently stopped.”
According to BP and the Coast Guard it will be days before they’re entirely certain that the new cap is working and oil and natural gas aren’t building up seismic pressure under the ocean floor that could potentially cause a new breach. Once they’re satisfied that the well bore is holding it’s integrity and the area is stable, they will consider completely shutting in the well.
