BP (NYSE:BP) Stuck Saw Stalls Oil Containment Effort

As many are hoping and waiting for a positive outcome from BP (NYSE:BP) on their recent cap attempt, their progress is now stalled due to a saw that is stuck over a mile below in the broken pipe. So now again, the progress of containing the oil has stopped.

Thad Allen, Coast Guard Administrator, said on Wednesday that the plan is to free the stuck saw today, and then finish the cut sometime later on in the day. Even though it seems that there is one snag after another, Allen was optimistic, he said they were successful overnight with the first cut using giant sheers.

Experts fear and have warned that this current oil spill containment attempt could be even riskier than previous attempts. The reason for this is as they push on with their fuel containment systems, cutting open the riser could potentially make the oil spill worse. Especially if there was a kink that had been restricting some of the flow of oil.

Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences said, "it's an engineers nightmare. They're trying to fit a 21 inch cap over a 20 inch pipe a mile away. That's just horrendously hard to do. It's not like you and I standing on the ground pushing, they're using little robots to do this."