Gulf Oil Spill, Oil Spill Containment | featured news

BP said today its attempt to place a new cap on its ruptured undersea well was proceeding as planned. But while robots replace the old cap, crude is flowing freely.

The federal official leading the Gulf oil spill cleanup said Friday a new containment cap and an additional ship collecting oil could effectively contain the spill in the next three days.

"Bottom kill" -- a massive dose of mud and cement shot through a relief well to stop the gushing of oil -- could take place before by July 20, BP says.

The cap on the damaged BP oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is now keeping up to 462,000 gallons of oil a day from leaking into the ...

BP reported some oil was flowing up a pipe Friday from a cap it wrestled onto its broken Gulf of Mexico well but crude still spewed and it was ...

BP used giant shears to slice off a pipe Thursday in the company's latest bid to contain the Gulf of Mexico oil, but the cut was irregular and placing a cap over the gusher will now be more challenging, Coast Guard Adm.

The chatter began weeks ago as armchair engineers brainstormed for ways to stop the torrent of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico: What about nuking the well?

Decades ago, the Soviet Union reportedly used nuclear blasts to successfully seal off runaway gas wells, inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow. Why not try it here?

BP Plc (BP.L) has hit a snag in its attempt to saw through a riser pipe in a risky operation to funnel leaking oil from a blown-out Gulf of Mexico well to the surface, the top US official overseeing the cleanup effort said on ...

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.