Update on Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response

Release date: 07 May 2010

BP today provided an update on developments in the response to the MC252 oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Subsea Source Control and Containment

Work continues to attempt to bring the MC252 oil well under control, to stop the flow of oil and to contain the oil subsea.

BP continues to use remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to monitor the subsea situation.

The containment dome arrived on location yesterday, from Port Fourchon, Louisiana, ready to be deployed. Once lowered to the sea bed, the next steps will be to connect the 40x24x14 feet steel dome, which weighs almost 100 tons, to a vessel on the surface. Once this operation is complete it will be possible to assess the effectiveness of the solution.

Work on the first relief well, which began on Sunday May 2, continues. It is expected to take some three months to complete.

Surface Spill Response and Containment

Work continues to collect and disperse oil that has reached the surface of the sea. More than 260 vessels are being used, including skimmers, tugs, barges and recovery vessels.

18 flights over the spill were carried out during the day and operations to skim oil from the surface of the water also continued as seas became calmer.

To date the oil spill response team has recovered about 30,000 barrels of oil-water mix.

The total length of deployed boom is now over 700,000 feet as part of the efforts to stop oil reaching the coast. Some one million feet is available and more than 300,000 feet is on order.

Suitable weather conditions allowed controlled burning of surface oil to be carried out.

A BP-led effort to address shoreline clean up continues. More than 4,000 people have been trained, out of about 30,000 volunteers, to deal with oil as it comes onshore.

BP press release