Oil Gushes as BP, White House Optimistic

(CBS/AP)  Hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil are being allowed to spew into the fouled waters of the Gulf of Mexico while BP engineers prepare to install a new containment system they hope will catch it all in the coming days.

There's no guarantee of success for such a delicate operation nearly a mile below the water's surface, officials said, and the permanent fix of plugging the well from the bottom remains slated for mid-August.

"It's not just going to be, you put the cap on, it's done. It's not like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste," Coast Guard spokesman Capt. James McPherson said.

Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf

A senior adviser to President Obama said the administration is confident that BP's latest effort to contain the oil spill will work. But at the same time, Obama adviser David Axelrod acknowledged that BP's engineers are in "uncharted waters" when it comes to dealing with the leak.

Robotic submarines removed the cap that had been placed on top of the leak in early June to collect the oil and send it to surface ships for collection or burning. BP aims to have the new, tighter cap in place as early as Monday and said that, as of Sunday morning, the work was going according to plan. BP hopes the capping operation will be done within three to six days.

Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said during a Sunday morning news briefing he was pleased with the progress but cautioned that unforeseen bumps could lie ahead.

"We've tried to work out as many of the bugs as we can. The challenge will come with something unexpected," Wells said.

If tests show the new cap can withstand the pressure of the oil and is working, the Gulf region could get its most significant piece of good news since the April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers.

It would be only a temporary solution to the catastrophe. Hope for permanently plugging the leak lies with two relief wells, the first of which should be finished by mid-August.

Mickey Fruge is BP's leader on DD2, a rig digging one of the relief wells. He tells CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann he's confident these relief wells will end the crisis - BP's silver bullet. But that's several weeks away, at best. Until that happens, like everyone, Fruge wants the spill contained.

"We take it personal because we know we're now familiar, with having polluting the Gulf of Mexico," said Fruge. "Our goal is to stop the oil and get this over with."

With the cap removed Saturday at 12:37 p.m. CDT (1737 GMT), oil flowed freely into the water, collected only by the Q4000 surface vessel, with a capacity of about 378,000 gallons. That vessel should be joined Sunday by the Helix Producer, which has more than double the Q4000's capacity.

But the lag could be long enough for as much as 5 million gallons to gush into already fouled waters. Officials said a fleet of large skimmers was scraping oil from the surface above the well site.

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The process begun Saturday has two major phases: removing equipment currently on top of the leak and installing new gear designed to fully contain the flow of oil.

BP on Sunday said it had successfully removed the top flange that had only partially completed the seal with the old cap, almost a day earlier than a previous estimate.

Now that the top flange is removed, BP is considering whether it needs to bind together two sections of drill pipe that are in the gushing well head. The following step involves lowering a 12-foot-long piece of equipment called a flange transition spool onto the well head and bolting it to the bottom flange still in place.

After the spool is bolted in place, the new cap - called a capping stack or "Top Hat 10" - can be mounted. The equipment, weighing some 150,000 pounds, is designed to fully seal the leak and provide connections for new vessels on the surface to collect oil. The cap has valves that can restrict the flow of oil and shut it in, if it can withstand the enormous pressure.

That will be one of the key items for officials to monitor, said Paul Bommer, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

"If the new cap does work and they shut the well in, it is possible that part of the well could rupture if the pressure inside builds to an unacceptable value," Bommer wrote in an e-mail Saturday.

Ultimately, BP wants to have four vessels collecting oil within two or three weeks of the new cap's installation. If the new cap doesn't work, BP is ready to place a backup similar to the old one on top of the leak.

The government estimates 1.5 million gallons to 2.5 million gallons of oil a day are spewing from the well, and the previous cap collected about 1 million gallons of that. With the new cap and the new containment vessel, the system will be capable of capturing 2.5 million gallons to 3.4 million gallons - essentially all the leaking oil, officials said.

The plan, which was accelerated to take advantage of a stretch of good weather forecast to last seven to 10 days, didn't inspire confidence in residents of the oil-slicked coast.

"I want to believe it and I'm going to take them at their word because it's good news," Mayor Tony Kennon of Orange Beach, Alabama, said Saturday.

But for the popular tourist destination, any halt to the leak comes too late to save the season, Kennon said.

Louisiana State University environmental sciences professor Ed Overton said he's less concerned with the strategy than with the unknown. As long as the cap is put on properly, the plan should work, he said.

"The problem is that almost everything they've done, there's been some unknown about it," he said. "I don't see why this is all that much different."

[deohgee]

Ya think Obama has a clue?

[generey]

Oh yea! He HAS to be optimistic, but quietly I am sure he is doubtful. GOOD President doing the best he can do given the pile of compost he was handed. Keep up the good work Mr. President!!!

[credibility_problem]

BP is an incredibly dishonest company, and nothing they say can be believed without independent confirmation - if it was up to them, they'd still be claiming the leak rate was 1,000 barrels per day, instead of the more realistic 50,000 barrels per day.

As far as Axelrod, President Obama's chief political consultant, he's been in bed with energy interests from the beginning, most notably the large coal and nuclear utility Exelon, and his job there? Greenwashing.

From Businessweek:

"The Secret Side of David Axelrod
The Obama campaign's chief strategist is a master of "Astroturfing" and has a second firm that shapes public opinion for corporations..."

That firm's other main partner is Eric Sedler, 39, a corporate-reputation specialist at Edelman, one of the world's top public relations agencies, and the recipient of a $100 million public relations campaign contract from none other than the American Petroleum Institute - which counts BP as one of it's top donors.

From BP to the American Petroleum Institute to Edelman PR to ASK consulting to David Axelrod to President Obama - that's the chain of connections there.

It's no different at the Department of Energy, where Steven Chu's deputy just happens to be BP's ex-Chief Scientist, a guy named Steven Koonin from Caltech who worked closely on BP's greenwashing deal with UC Berkeley.

Is it any surprise that the government is acting as a PR mouthpiece for BP? "We're confident this will work..." how many times has that been recycled, now? All while allowing BP to hire private security guards to keep the media from filming the disaster, no less!

This government is almost as beholden to fossil fuel interests as the Bush Administration was - a fact that the corporate press has certainly glossed over - but don't forget, it was Obama, the Senator from Illinois, who pushed offshore oil drilling and coal-to-gasoline schemes while in the Senate, wasn't it?

The truth is, that on energy policy, the fossil fuel industry controls government policy, and it doesn't matter which party is in the President's Office. That's what has to change - but would Obama ever drop Axelrod? I seriously doubt it - and Axelrod's private clients are big corporate interests - and that's who Obama is apparently working for.

[hamsterattack]

your rambling post ignores the fact that the obama admin. is actively supporting clean energy technology. unfortunately we can't just swith off oil overnight, but we sure as hell have a better shot at a cleaner future with democrats in charge. now go fill up your Escalade while you rail against our oil culture lol.

[rationall7]

My internet provider is Verizon, am I working for them? You can go back as far and deep as you want and you'll find a link between a gov offical and big industry even on a small local level and maybe an employee of the Mayor has a private business on the side then possibley I can assume who the Mayor is working for.

Chaney was a former CEO of Haliburton, Hank Snow came from GS and your right it doesn't matter which party is in the White House but to say "
and that's who Obama is apparently working for."

then what is your assumption on the solar industry, who's he working for?

[Vet_Turner]

I must say though the BPs engineers have done a great job. That the well blew out like it did , terrible and disgusting that they took short cuts. But since then, they have put their hearts into getting this thing stoppedl ====

[doctajim]

Between the corruption, the lies, and the complicity - I almost have to acknowledge how much of Amerika has been taken over by the Oil Industry (political parties, the media, education, and science are all corrupted). I couldn't figure out how it was so hard trying to plug the leak - I downloaded live video, measured diameters and distances and had 4 different ways the leak could have been plugged within a day (which I submitted to the appropriate agencies - all of which would easily have worked to stop the flow). I was afraid there was an ulterior motive for it taking so long - and there is - BP wanted to make a cap so it could continue taking oil out of the well - not plug it, not stop the environmental damage. not prevent all the losses to the people of the region - just so they could keep sucking out the oil - caring about nothing but profit and greed. And now they have another undamaged drilling right next to the original so they can put up another platform. Disgusting - I hope there is a he11 just for oil industry executives and the politicians they have bought - like Dan Lungren.

[credibility_problem]

They probably aren't capturing as much oil as they claim - that's likely just PR. Ask for some refinery receipts, and see if they match BP's claims.

This latest claim is just more PR. Recall how they had pipe jammed up into the blowout prevention device (BOP) from below? That means that the casing and cementing BENEATH the wellhead itself are likely damaged. If the top of the BOP were sealed, the whole thing - wellhead and all - might fly off as the pressure shot up. They've likely known this from day one.

Thus, the only solution is to drill down and intersect the well from below, a tricky and time-consuming activity. Off course, some countries require offshore well operators to drill a relief shaft at the same time as the well itself, keeping some distance above and behind it. If they had done that, they might have been able to cap the blowout within a week or two.

Why wasn't that done? For the same reason that no acoustic trigger was placed on the BOP, for the same reason that cementing log tests were canceled, the same reason that inferior steel was used in the wellhead casing - BP CEO spent two years bragging about how BP profits were due to production cost-cutting measures, go read the press from 2007-2009!

Part of those "cost-cutting measures" involve lobbying & bribing the federal government to reduce regulatory oversight and allow dangerous practices to become the norm. Way to go, Hayward! Clap... Clap... Clap...

The true scope of the corruption is that BP, while under an "ongoing criminal investigation" is allowed to hire private security guards to drive media reporters off oiled beaches, and is also allowed to block independent scientists from measuring the oil leak rate.

It's as if the Soviets, after Chernobyl, had refused access to independent scientists for weeks after the disaster - oh, wait - that 's exactly what the Soviets did! If you look at Katrina and the Gulf Blowout, you really have to wonder if the U.S. has adopted the Soviet disaster response plan... or the corporate greenwashing model, which is essentially the same thing.

[euge005]

My heart would not bleed if we nationalized BP. And put all the top exec's in prison until the gulf is made whole again. Not just BP, but the other companies that are also to blame as well.

[Skruffy1]

The headline is rather surreal. Oil gushes freely, BP and President optimistic. I do hope the new "fix" works, but BP has given the world absolutely no reason to have any confidence in them or their efforts. And sorry, but David Axelrod, although he may be a very earnest dude, at least superficially comes off weak as water.

[tsigili]

Sorry, I do not share in the rose-colored glasses, view. The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior, and on that basis, there is no optimism about BP's performance, whatsoever.

[euge005]

Agreed. I demand the Government use the law, the Clean Water Act to impose the fine in that law. I hear it is $3400 per barrel if there was criminality invloved.And Baby, this is criminal.