More Trouble for BP as Spill Approaches Florida

The whole top-kill effort didn’t work, and now BP’s next trick, involving an underwater saw device, has run into trouble in the Gulf of Mexico oil blowout cleanup crusade. Meanwhile, Florida is looking like the next state to get the oily treatment.

The Wall Street Journal:

BP PLC, under pressure to contain a massive oil spill that is affecting an increasingly wide swath of U.S. Gulf Coast shoreline, has hit a snag while trying to sever a pipe connected to the mile-deep well as a six-foot-long oil sheen was found along Florida’s Panhandle shoreline Wednesday.

Overnight, the response team was able to “successfully” make the first shear cut of the pipe, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the spill, said at a news conference in Houma, La. However, a specialized saw got stuck while making a second fine cut that’s needed before a containment device can be put in place.

“They are working that problem right now. The goal later on today is to finish that cut and to be able to put a containment device on top of the wellhead,” Adm. Allen said.

Read more

online.wsj.com

Saw, interrupted: Here we see the saw that stopped sawing.