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4A – Daily News – Tuesday, July 13, 2010 BP robots slowly lowering oil cap toward Gulf leak NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Undersea robots maneuvered a mile beneath the Gulf on Monday to delicately lower a new, tighter-fit- ting cap over BP’s bust- ed well, a fix the oil giant hopes can finally stop the leak after near- ly three months. The new cap, a 150,000-pound metal stack, was about 300 feet from where it’s sup- posed to be installed on top of the leaking well, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said in a Monday morn- ing news briefing. A swarm of remote- controlled robots moved around heavy equipment near the seafloor on live video provided online by BP PLC. It was not clear how close the cap was to the well, but Sut- tles said the operation was complex and could take longer than they expect. Oil could still be seen flowing freely from the top of the well where the cap will be attached. The BP executive was careful to keep expectations grounded, stressing that once the cap is in place, it will take days to know whether it can withstand the pressure of the erupting oil and feed it through pipes to surface ships. The cap and ves- sels together make up BP’s plan to stop oil from spewing into the Gulf for the first time since April 20. ‘‘Until we have the cap on, securely fitted in place, and know it’s operating per the design, we have to rec- ognize this is a complex operation,’’ Suttles said. It is the nation’s worst offshore oil spill. The well has spewed between 89.3 million and 176.4 million gal- lons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, according to federal estimates. The Exxon Valdez spilled about 11 million gal- lons. Gulf residents were wary after weeks of failed efforts to stop the spill and downcast about the damage already done to the bio- logically rich Gulf and the coast’s two leading industries, fishing and Always a Realtor on call! 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Matthew Peterson, a crabber in Yscloskey, La., hasn’t put out his traps since oil began washing ashore. ‘‘The oil is still out there, and it’s going to be there for, what, maybe 10 years?’’ he said. ‘‘Until it’s cleaned up, nothing’s going to get back to normal.’’ BP has tried and failed to counter the gusher with a giant con- crete box over the well, mud and shredded rub- ber pumped into it and a pipe to siphon the crude. ‘‘At this point, there have been so many ups and downs, disappoint- ments, that everybody down here is like, ’We’ll believe it when we see it,’’’ said Keith Kennedy, a charter boat captain in Venice, La. First lady Michelle Obama was expected in Panama City, Fla., on Monday to meet with local community leaders and tourism officials. 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BP’s new cap is designed to snap into place atop the well, held by a connecting piece that was installed overnight on top of the well pipe, said Eric Smith, associate direc- tor of the Tulane Energy Institute. Once the cap is firm- ly in place, the company will begin ‘‘shutting in’’ the well by closing per- forated pipe at the top. The company will be looking to see if the pressure rises inside the cap. If it does, that means there are no other leaks, and the cap is stopping oil from leak- ing into the Gulf. But lower pressure readings may indicate leaking elsewhere in the well. In that case, Sut- tles said, the company will work to collect the leak with surface ves- sels and by dropping yet another cap on top of the stack. The testing should last about 48 hours, Sut- tles said. Even if the tests show the cap is successfully holding in the oil, it will not be the final fix for the blown well. That will have to wait until one of two relief wells reaches the leak- ing well from under- ground and can inject heavy drilling mud and cement to form a perma- nent plug. BP expects one relief well will do the job, but it’s drilling a second as a backup. Officials have offered varying esti- mates for when that work will be done, but mid-August is the most common timeframe. Work on the new cap has been moving briskly, with the old, leaky cap coming off the well on Saturday. One snag in the opera- tion has been a delay in the startup of a vessel called the Helix Produc- er, which is supposed to connect to the well by a link below the cap, ulti- mately collecting roughly 1 million gal- lons of oil a day. The ship was sup- posed to begin collec- tion Sunday, but two minor technical glitches prevented that, Suttles said. He expects the ship to begin Monday, reaching full capacity within two days or so. 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