By Celsias team
Posted on June 7, 2010. Listed in:
A containment cap placed over BP’s ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico seems to be doing the trick to halt further spillage into the vast slick. Around 10,000 barrels of oil had been trapped and funnelled to a ship on the surface in the cap's second full day of operation on Saturday. This equated to “probably the vast majority” of oil leaking from the well, the oil behemoth’s CEO Tony Hayward told the BBC.
However, prior ro the placement of the cap late Thursday, scientists had estimated a minimum 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day were pouring into the Gulf.
In the six weeks since the well’s rupture on April 20, it is estimated that somewhere between 83 to 182 million litres of oil has leaked into the ocean. The vast slick now covers an area equating to an area larger than Northland, Auckland, Bay of Plenty and the East Coast combined (73,210 sq km).
The containment cap is the first measure that has worked to stem the flow, coming after a failed “top kill” operation – in which sludge was pumped at high speed into the well to displace the oil - the previous weekend. The finish line of the disaster is still far from sight – BP says the ultimate solution will likely be a relief well, currently being drilled but not due for completion until August.
The next steps will be for engineers to close the vents on the cap which are currently letting oil streams leak out, and to gradually increase the amount of oil being contained through an additional set of pipes and hopes.
