Oil Spill Teams Return to Area
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Saturday, July 24, 2010
Ships involved in the effort to secure BP's blown-out oil well are preparing to resume work after a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico weakened.
Workers had been preparing to evacuate the site, and one of the rigs drilling a relief well had been detached.
But
Tropical Storm Bonnie diminished into a "disorganised area of showers
and thunderstorms" before reaching the area, forecasters said.
The cap that has stopped the oil for the past week was left in place.
Tropical Storm Bonnie had caused flooding in Haiti,
Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but there were no reports of
significant damage as it passed over Florida.
It was
downgraded to a tropical depression earlier, and the US National
Hurricane Center said on Saturday that it was "unlikely" the system
would worsen, with a "near zero" chance of a tropical cyclone
developing.
A BP spokeswoman said the Development
Driller III, which is boring into the seabed to make a relief well, had
detached itself and moved away from the spill site in the build up to
the storm.
She said it was now heading back, and all other vessels were preparing to resume operations.
BP hopes to use two relief wells to pump material into the damaged well and permanently seal it.
The
oil firm placed a containment cap on the well last week and closed it
off, stopping the flow for the first time since April, when an
explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig set the crude gushing.