“The relief well at the end of August is certainly the end — the end point on this game,’’ Robert Dudley, BP’s managing director, said on ABC’s “This Week.’’ “But we failed to wrestle the beast to the ground yesterday.’’
“The worst is that we have oil leaking until August, until these relief wells are dug,’’ Carol Browner, the White House’s energy adviser, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,’’ “and we will be prepared for the worst.’’
The relief well solution would come in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season, which begins tomorrow. The crude probably won’t affect the formation of storms, but the cyclones could push the oil deeper into coastal marshes and estuaries and turn the oil into a crashing black surf.
Browner said there is more oil spilling into the Gulf than at any other time in history. “This is probably the biggest environmental disaster we’ve ever faced in this country,’’ she said.
Last week’s effort to curb the disaster — known as the “top kill’’ — failed after engineers tried for three days to overwhelm the crippled well with heavy drilling mud and junk 5,000 feet underwater.
And skepticism is growing that BP can solve the crisis. Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who leads a congressional committee investigating the disaster, told CBS’s “Face the Nation’’ that he has “no confidence whatsoever in BP.’’
“So I don’t think that people should really believe what BP is saying in terms of the likelihood of anything that they’re doing is going to turn out as they’re predicting,’’ he said.
BP hopes to saw through a pipe leading out from the well and cap it with a funnel-like device using the same remotely guided undersea robots that have failed in other tries to stop the gusher. Even that effort won’t end the disaster — BP officials have said only that it will capture a majority of the oil. None of the remaining options would stop the flow entirely or capture all the crude before it reaches the Gulf’s waters.
