BP Shares Plunge; New Containment Effort Under Way

(June 1) -- BP's stock plunged on the first day of trading since its failed "top kill" attempt to plug its runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

The British oil company lost more than 10 percent of its value in late-morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, with the share price down to around $38.40. The company lost 15 percent, as shares fell to $6.13 in early afternoon trading on the London Stock Exchange, its lowest level in more than a year, according to The Associated Press. Since the oil spill began April 20 with an explosion on its Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the company has lost about $63 billion in value.

The shares fell as the oil giant was moving ahead with its latest never-been-tried effort to contain the leaking underwater oil well, with a company official saying the cut-and-cap technique has a better chance of success and is less risky than the top kill method that failed over the weekend.

President Barack Obama is planning to meet today with the heads of an independent panel investigating the spill, and Attorney General Eric Holder is heading to the region to meet with the attorneys general from several states.

BP's newest attempt to contain the leaking oil calls for it to cut off the leaking pipe and cap it sometime this week and siphon the oil to a ship on the surface. "We are well into the operation to put this cap on the well now," BP Managing Director Bob Dudley said this morning on NBC's "Today."

The effort could temporarily increase the amount of leaking oil, but Dudley said on CNN that BP had enough certainty in the operation that it was worth the risk.

"The flow rate increase could be anywhere from zero to 20 percent," Dudley said. "Even with increased flow rate, this cap will be able to handle this."

Dudley said plans called for robot submarines to cut the riser pipe with diamond-tipped saws.

He said BP has four caps to choose from, depending on how clean the cut is. "We will pick one and put it over this to take the fluids to the surface," he said on NBC.

Dudley said the effort to cap the leaking pipe had a better chance than the top kill effort, which was abandoned Saturday, and he said a containment cap was less risky.

"We've gone down this path because the risks are lower," he told NBC. "The engineering, while not simple, is certainly simpler than what we were trying with the top kill.

"This technology, we think will be able to capture the vast majority of the fluids, if not all of the fluids," he said.

When told a professor had likened the effort to trying to put a cap back on a gushing fire hydrant under incredible pressure, Dudley said he had confidence in the robotic subs.

"The robots have done amazing things down there in those currents so far in the last three-plus days," Dudley said.

Carol Browner, an assistant to Obama for energy and climate change, wouldn't predict how successful the containment cap would be. "I don't want to put odds on it," she said on ABC's "Good Morning America. "We want to get this thing contained."

She also said the Obama administration is concerned about the effect that hurricane season, which began today, could have on the effort.

"I think our greatest concern about hurricanes is that if we are capturing the oil and putting it up to a vessel on the surface, that vessel will have to leave the area during a hurricane, which means the flow will be unabated," Browner said on ABC.

Oil has been leaking into the gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased by BP, exploded and killed 11 workers off the Louisiana coast more than a month ago. The spill has already eclipsed the nation's worst oil disaster, the Exxon Valdez spill that sent 11 million gallons into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.

So far, the gulf spill has leaked 19 million to 43 million gallons, government estimates say.

The best hope to stop the leak is the relief well BP is drilling that won't be ready until August. Asked if that worst-case scenario will come true, Dudley told NBC: "If we can get this containment activity working, then that's a good outcome. We'll keep the oil out of the gulf until we can permanently kill the well."

He didn't answer when asked on CBS' "The Early Show" whether BP should be concerned about the possibility of criminal charges against the company, saying: "I think we've done everything we can to react and respond to this accident. ... I don't think anybody could say we've stepped back and waited and walked away from it."