US authorities reach deal with BP to keep cap on leaking well

OIL giant BP will be allowed to keep its cap on the Gulf of Mexico leak for at least another day.

• A film of oil sits on the surface as a flotilla of vessels works at the spill scene. Picture: Getty Images

Admiral Thad Allen, the United States government official in charge of the clean-up, said he had authorised the extension after the company pledged to closely monitor the sea floor for signs of a new leak.

He said a government science team had held a conference call with BP and got the answers they wanted about how the company was monitoring the seabed in case any new leaks erupt from the capped well.

He wrote to BP on Saturday to say a seep had been detected a distance from the well and demanded the company step up monitoring of the seabed. He said yesterday he would allow the cap to stay on only if BP continued meeting its obligations to watch for signs that could possibly worsen the situation.

BP said the cost of dealing with the oil spill had reached nearly $4 billion (2.6bn). It said it had made payments totalling $207 million to settle individual claims for damages from the spill along the southern US coast. To date, almost 116,000 claims have been submitted and more than 67,500 payments have been made.

With the newly installed cap keeping oil from the BP well out of the Gulf during a trial run, the past few days offered a chance for the company and US government to gloat over their shared success - the first real victory in fighting the spill. Instead, the two sides have been disagreeing over what to with the undersea machinery holding back the leak.

The apparent dispute began on Saturday when Adm Allen said the cap would eventually be hooked up to a mile-long pipe to pump the crude to ships on the surface. But early the next day, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said the cap should stay shut to keep in the oil until relief wells had been finished.

The company very much wants to avoid a repeat of the live underwater video that showed millions of gallons of oil spewing from the blown well for weeks. The US government's plan to eventually pipe oil to the surface would ease pressure on the fragile well but would require up to three more days of oil spilling into the Gulf.

Both sides played down the apparent contradiction. Adm Allen, ultimately the decision-maker, later said the containment plan he described on Saturday had not changed, and that he and BP executives were on the same page.

Engineers are looking to determine whether low pressure readings mean that more oil than expected had poured into the Gulf of Mexico since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April, killing 11 people and setting off one of the US's worst environment crises.

To plug the leak, BP is drilling two relief wells, one of them as a back-up.