Mexico, May 05: BP has sealed the smallest of three leaks gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, but this won’t alter the amount of crude spilling into the sea, officials claimed last night.
“BP has been able to cap one of the three leaks so there is no more flow and now we are only working with two leaks which makes mitigating the situation a little less complicated,” said US Coast Guard Petty Officer Brandon Blackwell.
“We’re expecting the flow to remain the same even though there are now only two leaks.
“Working with two leaks is going to be a lot easier than working with three leaks. Progress is being made.”
BP had been working for days to fit a valve over the smallest leak to shut off the flow. Officials have said the same technique cannot be used to shut off the remaining leaks, one of which is much larger.
Two weeks after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, the full impact of the disaster is being realised as a massive slick looms off the US Gulf coast, threatening to wipe out the livelihoods of shoreline communities.
If estimates are correct, some 2.5 million gallons of crude have entered the sea since the BP-leased platform spectacularly sank on April 22, still ablaze more than two days after the initial blast that killed 11 workers.
The riser pipe that had connected the rig to the wellhead now lies fractured on the seabed 2km below spewing out oil at a rate at some 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day.
BP is preparing to deploy a 98-tonne metal “dome” to try to contain the oil from the main leak and funnel it up to a massive ship on the surface.
—Agencies