Having some experience in the oil and natural gas industries, I want to take a second and explain to people why you can't just "plug the well up." First off, to get my credentials in order, I worked in the fracturing side of the industry, called "Frac" for short. What we do is when the hole is drilled and the pipe line is sent in, we push water, chemicals and sand into that hole at about 10-15,000 PSI. There are little perforations in that pipe line that the sand/chemicals shoot into, thus creating "veins" underground. Those veins are then sucked out and oil/natural gas begins to flow through the wellhead. The reason they can't just "plug the wellhead" is because there is so much pressure created in the process and it's applied to the oil below the surface that it is almost impossible to just plug it. It's like trying to stop a fire hydrant with a piece of gum. No amount of gum will stop that fire hydrant, not because there isn't enough gum but because there is far too much pressure created within the hydrant to stop just *like that*.

It sounds to me like what is happening here is that BP can stop the flow of oil, they just aren't willing to lose out on the hundreds of millions of dollars that wellhead is bound to generate by shutting it down. Once it's shut down, it's down for good. They would have to drill another hole into the reservoir underground to get oil again. That wellhead/pipeline is shot, no question. It's just a matter of when BP will admit they screwed it up. However, given the EPA's regulations on that, don't expect to hear BP say sorry any time soon. Kind of like a car wreck, if you say sorry you admit you are wrong, which makes you liable automatically through insurance. The EPA would be up their ASS so much if they admitted they screwed up. That's why you haven't heard it yet, and that's why the efforts to clean the shit up are so half-assed. BP can't admit fault, they are liable at that point in the eyes of the government/EPA.

/off soap box.