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BP's containment problem is unprecedented
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico presents BP Exploration and Production with a problem of unprecedented severity–a limitless gush in very deep waters–forcing the London-based company to grasp for fixes that have never been tried before.
The problem with the April 20 spill is that it isn't really a spill: It's a gush, like an underwater oil volcano. A hot column of oil and gas is spurting into freezing, black waters nearly a mile down, where the pressure nears a ton per inch, impossible for divers to endure. Experts call it a continuous, round-the-clock calamity, unlike a leaking tanker, which might empty in hours or days.
"Everything about it is unprecedented," said geochemist Christopher Reddy, an oil-spill expert and head of the Coastal Ocean Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "All our knowledge is based on a one-shot event…. With this, we don't know when it's going to stop."
Accidents have occurred before in which oil has gushed from damaged wells, he said. But he knew of none in water so deep.