Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Update: Placing Container over Well

The Gulf of Mexico oil leak has arrived on the shore of several islands on the Louisiana coast with fragile animal habitats have oil. It's unknown whether the oil spill will turn into environmental disaster or not.

Gulf of Mexico Oil Cleanup

Multiple projects are in progress in attempts to cleanup and stop the oil spill in Gulf of Mexico's Deepwater Horizon. The most recent involves dropping a 100-ton cofferdam over the leak to collect the oil. The container needs to travel 5,000 feet below the surface, a length never tried before. The collected oil will funnel to the container's 128,000-barrel capacity tanker that can process 650,000 gallons of oil per day.

It takes a few days to lower the container while ensuring it lines up exactly where it needs to be. Misplacing the container could damage the pipe and potentially make the situation worse. After the container lands, crews connect a steel pipe to the tank so it can funnel the leaking oil to the tanker. If all goes well, this could collect up to 85 percent of the spewing oil. On Friday, the box passed 4,000 feet with 1,000 to go. Upon landing, robots go to work for hours to secure the tank over the main leak.

Another effort involves drilling sideways into the well in hopes to plug it from the bottom. But this is a two to three month job.

Contractors took off the "brain" of the broken failsafe blowout preventer to see if they can repair it. Thanks to better weather conditions, cleanup crews did a controlled burn on the oil spill. Over 8,000 people make up the cleanup crew, which has collected over 23,000 barrels of oil-water mix.

Government Activity

The government's order to stop all new off shore drilling in the U.S. include Alaska's coast continues through this month. Federal officials inspected 30 offshore drills in the Gulf of Mexico and only found one with a minor issue.

The Interior Department has also postponed meetings regarding new drilling leases. The department wants to review offshore drilling safety issues before holding the meetings. There's also discussion that the industry may see tighter drilling restrictions as a result of the oil spill.