After Failure, BP Readies 'Top Hat' to Stop Spill

BATON ROUGE, La. (May 10) -- BP resumed pumping chemical dispersants at a gushing oil well today, while the company readies a new containment dome and considers jamming trash into a leaking pipe in an effort to block the steady flow of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.

Deployment of a second dome, expected to happen as early as Friday, would come after the failure over the weekend of a 100-ton container to collect leaking oil and pipe it to a vessel on the gulf's surface. BP engineers believe the new dome, weighing about 2 tons, should work because its small size would reduce the amount of water in the pipe -- reducing the number of the ice crystals, or hydrates, that caused the larger dome's pipe to clog.

"The rationale for a smaller dome is that there will be less seawater in the smaller dome, and therefore less likelihood for hydrate formation," BP CEO Tony Hayward said in a conference call with reporters from Houston.


The dome would only contain leaking oil, but BP is working on another plan to stop the leak itself: a "junk shot" or "top kill" operation that would plug the well by ramming it full of debris such as golf balls and shredded tire rubber. Once it's clogged, cement could then be pumped in to seal the well permanently.

"What we're looking to do is pump stuff into it that will plug it up," said Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president.

Several BP officials have compared the junk shot to the clogging of a toilet. Wells said the method has been used successfully with wells on land, but never so far beneath the sea. The well is leaking at the floor of the gulf, a mile below the surface.

"There's a little bit of science to this, even though it sounds odd," Wells said.

The top hat, or smaller containment dome, would go over the leaking riser pipe that once connected to the Deepwater Horizon, an exploratory drilling platform that blew up on April 20 and sank two days later, killing 11 men working on the rig 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.

The junk shot would be attempted at a valve on the blowout preventer, the device meant to block off sudden flows of oil.

The cause of the blast is under investigation. The Associated Press has reported that a preliminary investigation shows the blowout was caused by a bubble of methane gas.

The panel investigating the disaster, led by the Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service, will hold two days of public hearings at a suburban New Orleans hotel beginning Tuesday.

The Environmental Protection Agency today approved a third round of experimental spraying of dispersants -- chemicals similar to household detergents -- at the leak's source on the seafloor. BP also fought the growing oil spill with boats skimming oil from the gulf's surface, airplanes spraying dispersants, controlled burns of thicker oil on the the gulf's surface and the placement of booms along the shoreline.

Winds from the east and southeast will likely continue pushing the slick westward, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. By Wednesday, that path would endanger the rich fishing stocks of Louisiana's Atchafalaya Bay, south of Morgan City, NOAA said.

With the pace of the leak, the spill could surpass the Exxon Valdez disaster by mid-June. The Exxon Valdez, a grounded tanker, leaked 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989, the nation's worst oil spill.

BP said it has spent $350 million so far on efforts to clean up the spill and stem the flow of oil, although the final tally is expected to be much higher.

BP last week began drilling an 18,000-foot relief well that would intersect with the leaking well and clog it with cement. That drilling is about half finished, Hayward said today, and won't be done for another three months. Hayward said the drilling of a second relief well should begin by Friday.

Tarballs believed to be from the leak began washing ashore at Dauphin Island, an Alabama barrier isle, over the weekend. Farther west, thin bands of oil hit Louisiana's barrier islands and are expected to hit Louisiana's Grand Isle soon.

Federal and Louisiana officials were working on a plan to quickly build up the barrier islands that protect the marshlands. The plan calls for bulking up almost 70 miles of barrier islands by digging sand and mud from the Gulf of Mexico and moving it to the islands' shores, The Washington Post reported.

BP executive Doug Suttles talked with officials about the plan Sunday but described it as "not yet complete," the Post said. He said he hoped it might not be necessary if the leak is shut off soon.