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BP’s ‘top kill’ begins again as effort to plug Gulf of Mexico spill continues

BP’s ‘top kill’ to cap the Gulf of Mexico oil leak will last at least another 24 hours, a BP official said late Thursday, after re-starting the procedure following testing.

“I should stress… that this operation continues,” BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles told a press conference referring to a risky bid to try to cap the leak spewing from the Deepwater Horizon well.

“It is proceeding according to the plan that we put in place and it will likely continue on for at least another 24 hours.”

But he said the British energy giant had stopped pumping a mixture of heavy drilling fluids known as “mud” into the fractured pipe to drown the oil flow in the early hours of Thursday, in order to monitor the results before resuming the work late in the day.

“Nothing’s actually gone wrong or unanticipated,” Suttles stressed, saying it was important for engineers to keep checking pressures as robotic submarines carry out the complex operation nearly a mile (1,600 meters) down on the seabed.

The operation had started earlier Thursday in a bid to finally plug the massive oil leak spewing into the Gulf waters since an explosion ripped through the rig on April 20.

“We pumped an extensive amount of drilling mud and followed by some monitoring of the well,” Suttles said.

“We reinitiated a second round of pumping and drilling mud late yesterday evening and continued that to just before midnight, when we stopped pumping operations. We then suspended activities overnight while we monitored the well.”

Since the pumping had been halted “we have been assessing the first — results from the first portion of our top kill efforts,” Suttles said.

“We restocked the vessels that were offshore and we have developed the next phase of the top kill operation. We should begin pumping operations some time a little later this evening.”

He stressed the flow of oil had not yet stopped and that the operation “may take longer” than anticipated.