A top official with oil giant BP said Friday that the containment dome placed over a damaged Gulf of Mexico well should capture "the vast majority" of leaking oil, though some seepage will continue even in a best-case scenario.
The oil that is still surging into the gulf from around the new cap is coming from vents that will be successively closed during the course of the day Friday, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"I'm actually pretty confident this is going to work. It probably won't capture all the flow, but it should capture the vast majority," Suttles said.
Suttles said some continued leakage into the gulf is part of design of the cap, a desperate and iffy attempt to capture the leaking oil and funnel it to a ship on the surface. Engineers want to keep water from mixing with gas and forming methane hydrates that can clog the operation, and the leakage is part of that.
"We'll probably have to have some small amount leaking around the bottom to make sure we don't draw this water in," Suttles said.
Thursday and the early hours of Friday were crammed with engineering drama, as BP launched the decidedly inelegant operation.
First, crews used robotic vehicles and a pair of giant shears to cut a damaged pipe a mile below the gulf's surface. The result simplified the whole arrangement at the sea floor: Instead of spewing from multiple leaks in a tangle of bent pipes, the oil and natural gas surged in a single plume from what looked like a deep-sea smokestack.
Then came the dome, lowered by cables, guided by robots, illuminated by lamps in a world without natural light, and carrying with it the hopes of countless engineers and pretty much the entire Gulf Coast.