Tube Catches ‘Some’ Oil From Leak

Engineers successfully inserted a tube into the damaged riser pipe from which some of the oil is spewing, capturing “some amounts of oil and gas” before the tube was dislodged, the announcement said. The tube was inspected and reinserted, BP said.

“While not collecting all of the leaking oil, this tool is an important step in reducing the amount of oil being released into Gulf waters,” the announcement said. It did not say why the tube had come dislodged or how much oil and gas were taken aboard the Discover Enterprise, the drill ship waiting to separate the oil, gas and water as it is siphoned off. The gas that reached the ship was burned using a flare system on board.

The tube is one of several proposed methods of stanching the flow of at least 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf, threatening marine life and sensitive wetlands and beaches in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. BP officials have emphasized that none of the techniques has been previously attempted at the depth of this leak, 5,000 feet below the surface.

Efforts to insert the tube, a five-foot section of pipe with a rubber seal designed to keep seawater out, into the broken riser pipe from which the majority of the oil is gushing, began on Friday using robotic submarines.

But the initial attempt to connect the mile-long pipe leading from the drill ship to the tube failed, and the device had to be brought back to the surface for adjustments.

“This is all part of reinventing technology,” said Tom Mueller, a BP spokesman, on Saturday. “It’s not what I’d call a problem — it’s what I’d call learning, reconfiguring, doing it again.”

NYTimes