→ Washington’s Blog

Here’s the scoop: BP’s attempt to stop the oil spill using the “Top Kill” method has failed.

How do I know?

Well, as the New York Times notes:

BP officials, who along with government officials created the impression early in the day that the strategy was working, disclosed later that they had stopped pumping the night before when engineers saw that too much of the drilling fluid was escaping along with the oil.

Indeed, BP stopped pumping “mud” for more than 16 hours (the material gushing out of the leaking riser didn’t stop during that time).

Basically, BP has failed in trying to drive enough “mud” down the well to provide enough weight to tamp down the oil gushing out. It didn’t work.

Indeed, BP’s “re-starting” Top Kill really means that Top Kill Version 1.0 was tried and failed, and now BP will try Top Kill Version 2.0 – adding “junk” to the mix.

Unless BP can get very lucky and plug the holes with miscellaneous junk, Top Kill 2.0 won’t be any more effective than Operation Sombrero.

As the Guardian explains:

Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, insisted that the operation was going to plan, but admitted: “What we do know is that we have not yet stopped the flow.” He said BP engineers would soon use additional materials to try to plug the well, suggesting heavy mud deployed so far would not work on its own.

And the Guardian’s oil spill blog (a great resource which I just discovered) notes: