ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

And I'm Michele Norris.

BP today sliced through a bent steel pipe on the seafloor using an enormous sheering machine. As a result, oil is now spewing straight up into the Gulf of Mexico. This move appears to have significantly increased the flow of oil into the Gulf, at least in the short run. But BP hopes to put a capture device over the spewing well and pipe most of the oil and gas into a ship on the surface.

Joining us to talk about today's events is NPR's science correspondent Richard Harris. Richard, bring us up to date with what's been happening at the well.

RICHARD HARRIS: Well, Michele, they've been working on a plan that required them to remove this huge bent over riser pipe which is sticking out of the blowout preventer. Yesterday they tried to do that with a saw that uses a diamond studded wire for a blade, but that got stuck in the pipe. And this morning they decided, well, we'll try again with a giant hydraulic pair of sheers. It looks something like enormous pruning shears and it was able to chop through that 21-inch diameter pipe with a smaller drill pipe inside of it.

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen announced at a news briefing this morning that the sheers had worked.

Admiral THAD ALLEN (U.S. Coast Guard): Which don't have as clean a cut, but we do have a cut now. The next step will be to put the containment cap over what's left of the riser pipe on the lower marine riser package. And start seeing if we could move gas and oil up the pipe, hopefully to start flaring off gas and start production later on today.

HARRIS: They wanted a nice clean cut because they're going to lower a device over the spewing pipe that the admiral mentioned. And they hope that that will draw the oil and gas up to the ship and a cleaner cut would mean less oil and gas would leak out. And the sheer cut, unfortunately, looks a little bit ragged, so we'll just have to see how well this will work now.

NORRIS: So, that's what they hope. But how are things looking at this point?

HARRIS: Well, at this moment there's an enormous plume coming up from that pipe on the sea floor. Its - Admiral Allen at his news conference said he expected the flow rate would increase maybe by about 20 percent once that pipe was cut and he attributed that figure to a panel of experts who have been advising the government on flow rates.

But the head of that panel this afternoon told me the figure actually comes from BP engineers, not independent scientists. And panel member Ira Leifer from U.C. Santa Barbara said if he'd been asked, he would've cautioned the admiral that the flow rate would be much higher possibly, thanks to all the material that BP pumped down through the blowout preventer over the weekend during its top kill maneuver.

Mr. IRA LEIFER (Researcher, UC Santa Barbara): Top kill had the effect of essentially sand blasting the inside of the pipe. So, top kill basically had the effect of cleaning the pipes as one might in your house. And once you clean pipes, they flow a lot faster.

HARRIS: And he says it looks like it's flowing a lot faster, but they don't have accurate views of high quality video, so they really can't say.

NORRIS: The BP executive Tony Hayward told CNN this afternoon that it could be another 12 to 24 hours. BP is currently trying to install this device to fit over that spewing pipe that Thad Allen did describe. This is the third time that they've tried that.

HARRIS: Yeah. And the first time was a complete failure. The second try worked fitfully, but it didn't collect all that much oil. So now they hope they've learned from experience. We'll see.

NORRIS: Is there yet another backup plan?

HARRIS: BP hasn't mentioned anything specific other than those so-called relief wells which will eventually intersect with a broken well far below the surface. They're supposed to pump cement into that and finally plug it up, but as you may recall, that's mid-August at the earliest. So they have, you know, they're always thinking ahead. They're always thinking about, well, if this doesn't work, what could work next?

But they've given up on the idea right now of trying to actually clog and plug up that well entirely from the top. So, if they can't manage that, we may have to wait till mid August or maybe later.

NORRIS: Thank you, Richard.

HARRIS: My pleasure.

NORRIS: That's NPR science correspondent Richard Harris.


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