BP dealt setback in oil containment bid

NEW ORLEANS: BP was dealt a setback on Saturday to capping a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after a containment dome encountered flammable hydrate formations as it was lowered onto the leak site.

The gas hydrates, similar to ice crystals, formed on the inside of the 100-ton (90-tonne) chamber as it neared the seabed nearly a mile (1,500 meters below the surface, making it too buoyant and clogging it up, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles told reporters.

Workers have moved the concrete and steel box some 650 feet (200 meters) to the side on the seabed while they evaluate their options.

An estimated 210,000 gallons of oil have been gushing every day from a pipe ruptured when the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon sank on April 22, two days after an explosion that killed 11 workers.

The high-stakes attempt to cap the leak, rife with expectations because it will take three months to drill relief wells to stem the flow, had been considered the best short-term solution to stave off the biggest US environmental disaster since the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

"I wouldn't say it's failed yet," Suttles said. "What I would say is what we attempted to do last night didn't work."

He said BP was also considering other methods to capture the flow.

Among the options being considered was to plug the leak by injecting ground-up material in a "junk shot."

"It has certain issues and challenges and risks with it, and that's why we haven't actually progressed up to this point. But we look and continue to see whether that's a viable option," Suttles said.

"It's all to do with we're working in 5,000 feet of water in a very difficult, challenging environment."

Workers have also sprayed dispersants over the slick to break it up and deploying hundreds of thousands of feet of boom to contain the spreading oil.

But environmentalists have warned that dispersants like Corexit were also nefarious to sea life.

"Those products don't make the oil go away," Gulf Coast Research Laboratory marine biologist Joe Griffitt told AFP. "It just falls to the sea bottom. That's where you'll find the sediments and the larvae. So the toxic effect is double."

Suttles said BP had anticipated encountering hydrates, but had not expected them to be as significant as a problem. Teams were evaluating whether the issue could be overcome by providing heat, methanol or other methods.

The dome had been expected to be operational on Monday and to collect about 85 percent of the leaking crude by funneling it up to a barge on the surface.