Attempt to divert Gulf of Mexico oil leak fails

The company’s first attempt to divert the oil was foiled, its mission now in serious doubt. Meanwhile, thick blobs of tar washed up on Alabama’s white sand beaches, yet another sign the spill was spreading.
It had taken about two weeks to build the box and three days to cart the containment box 50 miles out and slowly lower it to the well a mile below the surface, but the frozen depths were just too much. BP officials were not giving up hopes that a containment box — either the one brought there or another one being built — could cover the well. But they said it could be Tuesday or later before they decide whether to make another attempt to capture the oil and funnel it to a tanker at the surface.
The box was moved hundreds of feet away while officials tried to figure out their next move.
“I wouldn’t say it’s failed yet,” BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said of the containment box. “What I would say is what we attempted to do... didn’t work.”
Early Sunday, there was little visible new activity at the site of the oil spill. The skies were clear, but the waves on the sea were kicking up and the wind was breezier than in previous days.
There was a renewed sense of urgency as dime— to golf ball-sized balls of tar washed up Saturday on Dauphin Island, three miles off the Alabama mainland at the mouth of Mobile Bay and much farther east than the thin, rainbow sheens that have arrived sporadically in the Louisiana marshes.
“It almost looks like bark, but when you pick it up it definitely has a liquid consistency and it’s definitely oil,” said Kimberly Creel, 41, who was hanging out and swimming with hundreds of other beachgoers. “I can only imagine what might be coming this way that might be larger.”
In the nearly three weeks since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers, about 210,000 gallons of crude a day has been flowing into the Gulf. As of Sunday, some 3.5 million gallons had poured into the sea.
It had taken more than 12 hours to slowly lower to the seafloor the peaked box the size of a four-story house, a task that required painstaking precision to accurately position it over the well for fear of damaging the leaking pipe and making the problem worse. Nothing like it had been attempted at such depths, where water pressure can crush a submarine.
Company and Coast Guard officials had cautioned that ice-like hydrates, a slushy mixture of gas and water, would be one of the biggest challenges to the containment box plan, and their warnings proved accurate. The crystals clogged the opening in the top of the peaked box, BP’s Suttles said, like sand in a funnel, only upside-down.
Options under consideration included raising the box high enough that warmer water would prevent the slush from forming, or using heated water or methanol. Even as officials pondered their next move, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said she must continue to manage expectations of what the containment box can do.
“This dome is no silver bullet to stop the leak,” she said.