NEW ORLEANS - Scientists huddled Tuesday to analyze data from the ocean floor as they weigh whether a leaky cap is a sign of broken oil BP can be easily bent.
Oil and gas started seeping into the Gulf of Mexico again Sunday, this time slower, and scientists are not sure whether the leakage of the cap that the flow was stopped last week to make things worse mean.
The government point man on the disaster, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, will decide later Tuesday whether the experimental test of the shell remain - under the oil would remain locked in.
He said Monday the amount of the oil spill has so far been inconsistent. But since the supply of oil is Thursday completed, engineers are glued to underwater cameras and the pressure and seismic measurements, in an attempt to determine whether the cap is moving the pressure and causing underground leak, the seabed instability could and make sure that the property collapse.
"As a condition of making progress with the well integrity testing, BP has to report to us any abnormalities and a decision within four hours," Allen said Monday.
Water seepage from the seabed was also found in the weekend less than two miles away, but Allen said it was probably nothing to do with the property has. Oil and gas is known that mucus naturally from cracks in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
At a briefing Monday in Washington, Allen said BP could keep the top is at least another 24 hours as long as the company continued to leak alert.
For those whose livelihood depend on clean water, worried about the CAP was tempered by relief that the oil flow stopped.
"I'm for anything that will stop the oil," said Capt. Ty Fleming, who runs charter fishing trips in Orange Beach, Ala. said Tuesday. "I think if you have much to pour for one million liters, and now you have less, it's like comparing a coconut hitting you in the head with a raisin. The Raisin would be insignificant."
BP and the government had been at odds over the desire of business to simply leave the CAP in the work place and like a giant cork in a bottle to a relief, and drilled deep underground can be used to plug up and permanently.
Allen said his first preference was for oil tankers to the pipe cap on the surface of the small chance that reduce the building pressure in the well would cause a new tire. That plan would release millions of gallons of oil into the ocean for a few days during the transition - a spectacle BP apparently wants to avoid.
On Monday, Allen paid a little, except to say bigger problems to develop, he is not inclined to open the hood.
Also on the table: Pumping drilling fluid through the top of the cap and into the well bore to stop the oil flow. The idea is similar to the failed summit killing plan that could not overcome the pressure of the geyser to push up.
BP said it should work now because there is less oil to fight, but it was not clear how such a method would affect the stability of the cap. Allen said that the exemption also the plan for a permanent fix.
BP and the government still trying to understand why pressure readings from the well are lower than expected. Any two possible explanations: The reservoir of the oil offered is declined in the pouring, or there is an undetected leak somewhere down in the pit.
"I am not prepared to say that the property is locked up until the light well," still a few weeks away, Allen said. "There are too many uncertainties."
BP and the Coast Guard learned that lesson the hard way, after she initially said no oil came from the site of the rig Deepwater Horizon 20.04 after exploding, killing 11 workers. Even after it became clear that there was a leak, the company and its federal regulators drastically underestimated the magnitude weeks.
Government investigators try to determine whether a leak of hydraulic fluid BP missed a critical safety mechanism that could have prevented the disaster. A drilling supervisor testified Tuesday that he was the leak to his supervisor for weeks reported explosion.
Ronald Sepulvado, a BP-site property manager, told a panel of investigators in the suburbs of New Orleans, he did not know if federal regulators were informed of the leak, as required.
Work on a solid plug is always in motion, with crews drilling into the side of the property torn from deep underground. In the next week, they start blasting in the mud and cement block from the well for good. The killing of the deep underground work and more reliable than a bottle cap.
Somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons poured into the Gulf over the past three months in one of the worst environmental crises America.
BP PLC says the cost of treating the spill is almost reached $ 4,000,000,000. The company said that payments totaling 207 million U.S. dollars in claims for the settlement of claims made. Nearly 116,000 claims have been filed and more than 67,500 payments. BP stock was slightly down Monday.
"I hope they all cleaned up in the next one to two years. Let us hope that things will be back to normal to get," said Terry Lash, manager of Doc's Seafood & Oyster Bar Shack in Orange Beach, Ala. "We're hurting really bad, but there are other restaurants that are worse than we are. "
