BP's latest and possibly last-ditch attempt to stem the flow of oil from its crippled Gulf of Mexico well ran into another snag Wednesday, as the expanding slick of crude from the spill drifted closer to previously untouched beaches in Florida and two other U.S. states.
Using remotely controlled robots, BP was attempting to saw through a damaged pipe on the seafloor, more than 1,500 metres underwater, in the first stage of a risky operation to cap it and stop the oil spill.
The riser pipe, which leads directly from the well head, was badly damaged in the April 20 blowout that caused the spill.
BP was attempting to cut the damaged portion of the pipe away to cap it. But Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the top U.S. official overseeing the cleanup, told a news conference that the blade became stuck inside the pipe.
"I don't think the issue is whether or not we can make the second cut. It's about how fine we can make it, how smooth we can make it," Allen said.
It took about 12 hours to free the saw, the company said. Preparations were underway to resume cutting, but BP didn't specify when it expected the cutting would resume.
If the pipe is eventually sawed off, repair crews would then place a cap over the leak and funnel the gushing oil through another pipe to a tanker vessel on the surface.
This is the latest of several attempts by BP to seal off a leak that is spewing hundreds of thousands of litres of oil a day into the Gulf. All previous efforts to stop or even lessen the flow have failed.
"It is an engineer's nightmare," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences. "They're trying to fit a 21-inch cap over a 20-inch pipe a mile away. That's just horrendously hard to do. It's not like you and I standing on the ground pushing -- they're using little robots to do this."
BP's best chance to actually plug the leak rests with a pair of relief wells but those won't likely be completed until August.
Meanwhile, the slick from the crippled well has now drifted within striking distance of beaches on the Mississippi, Georgia and northwestern Florida coast.
The oil has been spreading in the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 workers and eventually sinking. The rig was being operated for BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf.
Crude has already been spotted on islands along Alabama and Mississippi's Gulf coast, and it has polluted an estimated 200 kilometres of Louisiana coastline.
More federal fishing waters were closed Wednesday due to contamination by the oil, an enormous setback for one of the region's most important industries. More than one-third of federal waters are now off-limits for fishing, along with hundreds of square miles of state waters.
In Florida, officials confirmed that an oil slick from the spill has drifted to within about 15 kilometres of its Pensacola beach, a popular seaside tourism spot in Florida's "Panhandle."
Winds are expected to push the slick onto the pristine white beaches on Friday. Emergency crews have rushed to shore up kilometres of booms, enough to block the oil from reaching inland waterways but too little to protect the beaches.
"It's inevitable that we will see it on the beaches," said Keith Wilkins, deputy chief of neighbourhood and community services for Florida's Escambia County.
The spill is already the biggest in U.S. history, releasing more than three times the amount of crude than the Exxon Valdez disaster, and federal officials have called it an ecological catastrophe.
‘How could this happen?'
John Hofmeister, former oil company executive and founder of Citizens For Affordable Energy, said more than 35,000 wells similar to BP's now-broken well have been drilled and successfully operated over four decades.
He said the equipment used by the oil industry is well-designed and safe, raising the possibility of human error as the cause of the explosion and subsequent oil spill.
"You have to wonder, how could this happen?" he told CTV News Channel. "The whole industry is watching to see if we had mistakes in judgment here."
"Did we have inexperience; Did we have flawed communications; what could have happened that led to so may systems collapsing all at the same time? … These are all human decisions that could have led to this tremendous tragedy"
Massive sell-off
The spill has caused BP's stock to plummet on world markets.
The failure of a previous well-capping bid and the announcement Tuesday that the U.S. Justice Department was considering criminal and civil actions into the spill led to a massive sell-off of BP stocks.
Shares in British-based multinational were down 3 per cent Wednesday in London trading after a 13 per cent fall the day before. BP has lost $75 billion in market value since the spill began.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who visited the Gulf on Tuesday, would not say who might be targeted in probes into the spill, but warned: "We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill. If we find evidence of illegal behaviour, we will be extremely forceful in our response."
U.S. President Barack Obama ordered the co-chairmen of an independent commission investigating the spill to thoroughly examine the disaster, "to follow the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favour."
With files from The Associated Press
