Oil leak costs BP more than $450million
Updated on 13 May 2010
The head of BP admits his job is on the line as the company releases the first underwater footage of oil gushing from a broken pipe nearly a mile underwater in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP head Tony Haywood promised the company would "fix" the slick, which follows an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon platform that left eleven people dead.
During two days of congressional hearings in the US, BP and its contractors, Transocean and Halliburton, have admitted fail-safe equipment on the seabed was faulty and there were warnings the rig was about to blow.
Addressing a congressional hearing, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles used the footage to describe the challenges involved in stemming the oil flow.
Oil flowing from a break in the yellowish pipe becomes lighter in colour as it mixes with natural gas.
Over the past 21 days since the explosion more than four million gallons of oil have been released.
Environmentalists have warned of a disaster as the oil slick moves towards the fragile ecosystem of the Gulf coast destroying wildlife and threatening livelihood.
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BP, which owns the well, has been trying to stop the flow of oil by attempting to house it in a box which would then funnel the oil to a ship on the surface.
While revealing the underwater footage Doug Suttles said that the flow rate looked "pretty much the same as it's always looked".
"It may have a bit more of this white element to it, which may or may not mean that the flow rate is reduced slightly," he added.
Meanwhile, a new containment box - a cylinder called a "top hat" - was placed on the sea floor near the well leak.
Engineers hope to work out ways to avoid the problem of an earlier effort which used a much bigger box, before they move the cylinder over the end of the 5,000ft long pipe from the well. The original box filled up with an ice-like slush of gas and water, lifting it up and clogging its nozzle.
Another plan is also being devised which involves siphoning oil away from the broken pipe.
An investigation is currently underway to determine the cause of the rig fire and subsequent oil leak. New disclosures have revealed a complex cascade of deep-sea equipment failures and procedural problems.
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Congressional investigators revealed that a key safety system, known as the blowout preventer, used in BP's oil-drilling rig in the Gulf had a hydraulic leak and a failed battery that probably prevented it from working as designed.
They said that BP documents and others also indicated conflicting pipe pressure tests should have warned those on the rig that poor pipe integrity may have been allowing explosive methane gas to leak into the well.
