BP's top kill

The most ambitious bid yet to stop the worst oil spill in U.S. history ended in failure. BP was unable to overwhelm the gusher of crude with heavy fluids and junk. President Obama called the setback "as enraging as it is heartbreaking."
The company determined the "top kill" had failed after it spent three days pumping heavy drilling mud into the crippled well 5,000 feet underwater.It's the latest in a series of failures to stop the crude that's fouling marshland and beaches, as estimates of how much oil is leaking grow more dire.
U.S. history — exceeding even the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster — and has dumped between 18 million and 40 million gallons into the Gulf, according to government estimates.
BP PLC Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said,"This scares everybody, the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven't succeeded so far,"
President Barack Obama .visited the Gulf Coast to see the damage firsthand. Obama said,"It is as enraging as it is heartbreaking, and we will not relent until this leak is contained, until the waters and shores are cleaned up, and until the people unjustly victimized by this manmade disaster are made whole."
In the latest try, BP engineers pumped more than 1.2 million gallons of heavy drilling mud into the well and also shot in assorted junk, including metal pieces and rubber balls.
The hope was that the mud force-fed into the well would overwhelm the upward flow of oil and natural gas. But Suttles said most of the mud escaped out of the damaged pipe that's leaking the oil, called a riser.

"If they can't get that valve on, things will get much worse," said Philip W. Johnson, an engineering professor at the University of Alabama.

Johnson said he thinks BP can succeed with the valve, but added: "It's a scary proposition."

"They are going to destroy south Louisiana. We are dying a slow death here," said Billy Nungesser, the parish president. "We don't have time to wait while they try solutions. Hurricane season starts on Tuesday."

source by news.yahoo.com