Effort to Contain Oil Spill Faces Setback

This weekend, BP, the company responsible for one of the biggest oil spills in history, met with a serious set back when their latest attempt to contain the spill, failed.

On Friday, they tried to lower a containment box - a large 100-ton steel and concrete structure and place it over the main leak. The idea was to collect the spewing oil inside the container, and then draw it to the surface, using a mile-long pipe.

Though not a permanent solution, it would have been a great way to temporarily capture the 5,000 gallons of oil, that has been leaking into the ocean every day, since that fateful day on April 20th.

However, even as they attempted it, the company officials knew that they may face some unknown challenges. That's because, containment boxes such as these, have never been used at such depths.

Yesterday, some of their fears came true. As they tried to slowly lower the dome, a large volume of hydrates - ice-like crystals that form when natural gases and water combine in a high pressure, low temperature environment, made their way into the box and settled at the top.

This created a two-fold problem - hydrates are lighter than water and hence their presence inside the dome, made the structure buoyant and harder to place over the gushing well. And, they are also clogging the top of the container, making it difficult to draw the oil up to the surface through the pipe.

The container, which took two weeks to build and three days to ship to Louisiana, has been temporarily parked on the ocean bed close to the well, as officials contemplate what to do next.

They have managed to stop the leak from one of the smaller wells and are also investigating other possible solutions. Amongst the things under consideration is installling a new blowout preventer device or plugging the gushing oil well with rubber cuttings. However, neither solutions are as cut and dry as they sound and have their own risks, which have to be weighed carefully before any attempt is made.

Meanwhile, an estimated 3 million gallons of oil has spewed into the oceans since this unprecedented nightmare began. We hope that one of the containment methods will work soon.

sources: nydailynews.com,www.cnn.com,www.latimes.com