A new, tighter cap on the BP well could capture all the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the leader of the U.S. spill response said.
Thad W. Allen, a retired Coast Guard admiral, told reporters in New Orleans workers would start removing the existing well containment cap atop the failed blowout preventer as early as Saturday, The New York Times reported.
Installing the cap using remotely operated submersibles a mile underwater will take three to four days, Allen said, and it will be fully operational within seven to 10 days.
If the new cap fails, the existing one, now diverting about 15,000 barrels of oil a day to a surface ship, would have to be reinstalled, Allen said.
After consulting with BP and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Allen said, he told BP to provide a time line to "accelerate
the replacement of the current containment cap" during good weather expected to last at least a week.
BP Chief Managing Director Robert Dudley said the company had planned to install the tighter cap after a third system involving another surface ship, the Helix Producer, was operational. But because of the good weather, he wrote, BP, "in conjunction with government experts," had proposed that the new cap "be implemented in parallel with the startup of the Helix Producer."
When the well is without a cap, Allen said, the third system for collecting oil would divert as much as 20,000 barrels a day to the Helix Producer.
"Somewhere between Sunday into Monday, maybe early Tuesday at the latest, we'll probably be able to replace the amount that was being recovered by the
Discoverer Enterprise and maybe exceed that," Allen said.
The spill started April 20 with an explosion and fire on BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform that killed 11 workers. For weeks, tens of
thousands of barrels a day of oil poured into the Gulf, making the spill the worst in U.S. history.