BP today said it was exploring a new way to siphon oil from a massive leak in the Gulf of Mexico while it prepares for another attempt this week to seal a blown-out well.
The US government has piled pressure on BP Plc to clean up a "massive environmental mess" in the Gulf of Mexico, and a top official has said fines would definitely be imposed on the energy giant for the spreading oil spill.
The company insisted it was doing all it could to try to seal a blown-out oil well spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf every day, a disaster that threatens to become the worst US oil spill in history.
BP said it would make another attempt to plug the five-week-old leak tomorrow, but gave it only a 60-70 per cent chance of success.
The company plans to inject heavy fluids and then cement into the seabed well to block oil flow in a so-called "top kill" operation.
Looking beyond that manoeuvre, the company today said it was exploring a new way to siphon oil from the well.
It plans to remove a damaged part from the well and put in place a tube to capture the oil and gas in what it called the "LMRP cap containment option".
BP, which already has one siphon tube in place on a pipe leading from the sunken rig, said it would be ready to try to fit the new tube by the end of the month.
BP executives have warned there is no certainty the containment efforts will succeed, because they have never been attempted at the depths - 1.6 km down - where the well is located.
BP's shares fell nearly 3 per cent in London as investors waited to see whether BP's latest attempt would work.
The company has now lost about 25 per cent of its market value - almost $50 billion - since the spill began.
The head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, said the government would "absolutely" levy fines on BP over the spill.
Three of President Barack Obama's cabinet secretaries travelled to the Gulf Coast yesterday to survey what could eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska as the worst US ecological disaster.
"The potential damages in this case are much greater than the Exxon Valdez," said Brent Coon, an attorney who represents a survivor of the deadly April 20th offshore rig explosion.
Mr Coon estimated BP's potential liability in the "hundreds of billions of dollars." Heavy oil is already washing into fragile marshlands and wildlife refuges in Louisiana and threatening the livelihoods of Gulf Coast residents.
More than 300 seabirds have been found dead and the spewing oil is now invading teeming, vulnerable marshes and endangering sea turtles, dolphins and whales.
The government declared a "fishery disaster" in the seafood-producing states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama yesterday.
Reuters