Bp Oil Spill, Oil Spill Containment | featured news

Robot submarines carried equipment and cut small pipes at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico on Monday to prepare to place a new containment valve over the blown-out well this week, while BP crews began working on yet another containment plan that could be added after the cut-and-cap effort.

The effort to place a massive containment dome over a gushing underwater wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico was dealt a setback when a large volume of hydrates -- icelike crystals that form when gas combines with water -- accumulated inside the vessel, a BP official said Saturday.