WASHINGTON — BP managed last night to place a containment cap on the recently sawed-off pipe that has spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
But oil and gas continued to leak as engineers tried to fine-tune the fit.
Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said, “The placement of the containment cap is another positive development in BP’s most recent attempt to contain the leak, however, it will be some time before we can confirm that this method will work.”
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He noted that “even if successful, this is only a temporary and partial fix.”
Earlier, a live video feed of the blowout site, located on the ocean floor about a mile down, showed the device being placed as oil and gas continued to billow up.
Technicians had cut the leaking pipe using robot-controlled shears after a special diamond-tipped saw jammed 5,000 feet underwater Wednesday.
The jagged cut won’t provide as tight a seal as a smooth cut from the diamond saw would have.
A company spokesman last night refused to say whether the cap was working.
Earlier in the day, BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward, said that it would take “12 to 24 hours” after the cap was installed to “give us an indication of how successful this attempt will be.”
The developments came as President Obama said he is “furious” at the Gulf oil spill — a day after film director Spike Lee implored him to “go off” about the disaster.
Asked yesterday by CNN’s Larry King whether he was “angry” at BP, Obama responded, “You know, I am furious at this entire situation.
“Because this is an example of where somebody didn’t think through the consequences of their actions and it is imperiling an entire way of life and an entire region for potentially years.”
The president kept his cool and didn’t mention the oil company by name.
When King asked whether the company had felt his wrath, Obama said it had — and then defended his steady demeanor.
“I would love to just spend a lot of my time venting and yelling at people, but that’s not the job I was hired to do. My job is to solve this problem,” he said.
The president did say he hasn’t seen “the kind of rapid response” from BP that he should have.
Facing mounting criticism over his handling of the crisis, Obama today will make his third visit to the Gulf and may go out in a boat to inspect the environmental damage. The president last night said he’s canceling a trip to Australia and Indonesia later this month to deal with issues including the spill.
In another development, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research released a computer model that revealed that currents could carry oil around the tip of Florida and thousands of miles up the Atlantic coast.
Under the model, which the center noted was not a forecast, oil could flow into the loop current and travel all the way up to Cape Hatteras, NC, before heading east farther into the Atlantic Ocean — and reach a latitude as high as New York.
“I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Will the oil reach Florida?’ ” said NCAR scientist Synte Peacock.
“Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood.”
The chilling analysis came as oil reached within 6 miles of the white beaches of Pensacola on the Florida Gulf Coast, where it could land this weekend.
BP plans to stop the gusher with two relief wells, but those won’t be finished until August. With AP