Gulf oil leak capped: BP
Thursday, July 15, 2010 at 05:30PM 
Oil has stopped flowing from BP's broken wellhead into the Gulf of Mexico thanks to a new containment cap, the company said Thursday.
BP began testing the cap on Thursday afternoon, closing off openings in it one by one while monitoring pressure underneath. The tests will continue in six-hour increments for up to 48 hours before the procedure will be considered successful.
The cap will enable BP to stop the oil from gushing into the sea, either by holding all the oil inside the well machinery like a stopper or, if the pressure is too great, directing some through pipes to as many as four collection ships on the surface.
The new cap was lowered onto the well on Monday, but efforts to test the system have been repeatedly delayed.
Tests on it were halted on Wednesday after crews discovered oil leaking out of a pipe called a "choke line" that is attached to the sealing cap.
Thad Allen, the point man on the disaster for U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, told reporters Thursday morning that teams had replaced the choke line and would be checking it.
Allen said the testing would also offer insight into the other, more permanent solution to the fix: two relief wells intended to plug the gusher from deep underground.
'Break in the action'
The mapping of the sea floor that was done to prepare for the well cap test and the pressure readings will also help determine how much mud and cement will be needed to seal off the well.
Drill work was stopped on the relief well because it was not clear what effect the testing of the cap might have on it. Work on the other relief well had already been stopped according to plan.
The ultimate solution to stopping the blowout is to plug the wells, which can only be done when a relief well intersects with the old well bore.
Meanwhile, Allen said the prevailing winds are slowing the drift of oil to shore.
"We're getting a little break in the action as far as the oil closing [on] shore," he said. "It's given us a chance to kind of consolidate our forces and make sure we can redouble our efforts on onshore cleanup."
Since the oil well off the Louisiana coast blew out on April 20, setting off an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, an estimated 689 million litres of oil have flowed into the Gulf.
Source: CBC News
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