First Attempt- The robot submarines are attempting to close off the flow of oil by activating a shutoff device at the well head known as a blowout preventer.
Benton F. Baugh, who holds patents for blowout preventer parts, said the subs should be able to do the job.
"If they can't get it closed off, something really unusual happened," said Baugh, president of Radoil Inc. in Houston and a National Academy of Engineering member.
As of May 1, 2010- The subs haven't been able to do the job.
Next Idea- The company is planning to collect leaking oil on the ocean bottom by lowering a large dome to capture the oil and using pipes and hoses to pump it into a vessel on the surface, said Suttles, the BP executive. "That system has been deployed in shallower water," he said, "but it has never been deployed at 5,000 feet of water, so we have to be careful."
If that doesn't work, they will have to drill a relief well- Kenneth E. Arnold, an offshore production facility expert and another member of the engineering academy, said drilling a relief well is not an easy task.
"You have to intersect the well," he said. "Sometimes you have to drill through the steel, and that's what happened in Australia. It took them three times before they were successful."
He was referring to a blowout on the West Atlas rig in the Timor Sea last August. It wasn't until November that mud could be pumped through a relief well to shut off the deepwater spigot. The oil spill has resulted in major environmental damage along the coast of East Timor and Indonesia.
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