BP Trying Dome to Cap Leak — Again

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Oil Spill Undersea View

Video grab taken from a BP live video feed.

We’ve come full circle: BP is back to trying something that didn’t work the first time in a desperate attempt to rein in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, now in its sixth week.

The company is preparing to give its lower marine riser package cap containment system another spin, but this time they’re doing it with a little more knowledge of earlier mistakes and how the technology reacts to deep-sea conditions. The dome had first been used in an attempt to control the flow of crude three weeks ago, but technical problems forced BP to abort the operation.

If the attempt is successful this time, much of the oil could be captured and diverted, but it is still not a permanent solution to the undersea geyser. Construction of two relief wells is still months away, and hurricane season officially starts today, adding to the worries of BP and government officials, as well as residents of the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, all of which have coastlines threatened by the oil.

“If this doesn’t work, you are looking at August before you can kill the well,” Larry Goldstein, a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation told The New York Times. “That would mean oil would be seeping into the gulf, into our wetlands and into our way of life at the rate of 15,000 or 20,000 barrels a day — you pick the number.”

There is a blip of good news, however. Despite the continuing flow from the bottom of the sea, on the surface, BP reports 1,600 vessels have captured more than 321,000 barrels from the water, although that hardly scratches the surface of the 30 million gallons floating around in the Gulf.

See photos of some of the biggest oil spills in history.