2010-08-05 09:17

NEW ORLEANS - A crush of mud finally plugged the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico, three months after the offshore drilling rig explosion that unleashed a gusher of oil and a summer of misery along the Gulf Coast.

The government stopped just short of pronouncing the well dead, cautioning that cement and mud must still be pumped in from the bottom to seal it off for good.

President Barack Obama declared that the battle to contain one of the world's worst oil spills is "finally close to coming to an end."

Yet after months of living with lost income, fouled shorelines and dying wildlife, some Gulf Coast residents weren't so sure. Still, it appeared there might finally be an end in sight to the disaster that closed vast stretches of fishing areas, interrupted the usually lucrative tourist season, and cost BP's CEO his job and the company's shareholders billions of dollars.

BP PLC said 2,300 barrels of mud forced down the well overnight - an operation called a "static kill" - had pushed the crude back down to its source for the first time since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded off Louisiana on April 20. The explosion killed 11 workers and began the spill that sent tar balls washing onto beaches and oil oozing into delicate coastal marshes.

Later Wednesday night, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said he approved BP's plan to begin forcing cement down the well, as long as it didn't delay work on the relief well. BP officials said they planned to begin pumping cement on Thursday.

And there was more seemingly good news: A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report released Wednesday claimed that only about 30 percent of the spilled oil remains in the Gulf and is degrading quickly. The rest has been contained or cleaned up or otherwise disappeared, and the report also said the oil no longer poses a threat to the Florida Keys or the East Coast.

But some independent experts said they were concerned that the government's method of estimating the amount was too simple for such a complex spill, and even government scientists cautioned the rosy numbers do not mean the Gulf is out of harm's way.

The containment effort - and the cleanup - aren't finished either. Federal officials said they won't declare complete victory until they pump in mud and cement from the bottom to seal the well, a procedure that might not be done for weeks.

"We're in a good place today, but we want to get it permanent over the near term, whether that's days or weeks," said Kent Wells, BP senior vice president, who repeatedly and pointedly avoided saying the static kill had finished the job. Asked when he will be able to say the well is dead, he replied: "I'm looking forward to that day."

An experimental cap had stopped the oil from flowing for the past three weeks, but it was not a permanent solution. Before it was lowered, the government estimates that 172 million gallons of oil had flowed into the Gulf.

And before that, BP tried a series of often-absurd sounding contraptions, raising hopes only to dash them when those efforts failed. They included a giant 100-ton containment box that got clogged with ice-like crystals and the so-called junk shot, an attempt to clog up the well with golf balls and rubber scraps.