The rig owner is claiming progress on capping a deepsea well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, but, as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said on May 17, “We are nowhere close to the finish line. This disaster will not be over for Louisiana until our water and our shores are completely clean and our wildlife, our communities and our coastal industries are 100% restored.”
BP, owner of the Macondo well that has been gushing oil into the gulf since the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank April 20, says it succeeded, on a second try, in inserting a 4-in-dia drill pipe into a 21-in.-dia riser that is one of two sources of the spill. BP says the inserted tube is capturing about 1,000 barrels per day of a flow it estimates at 5,000 bpd, or 210,000 gallons per day. A growing number of researchers dispute that figure, however, and say the flow may be as large as 4.2 million gallons per day.