Gulf oil spill

VENICE, La., June 7 (UPI) -- The cap placed over a spewing wellhead on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico is trapping thousands of barrels of oil, which is being pumped to a surface ship.

BP, the company working the well when an explosion April 20 destroyed a platform and killed 11 workers, said in a release Monday it had collected 10,500 barrels of oil and 22 million cubic feet of natural gas in operations Sunday.

Estimates are that up to 25,000 barrels of oil are escaping the pipe each day, threatening to foul hundreds of miles of coastline and affect sensitive ecosystems and wildlife.

Engineers placed a containment cap over the wellhead and the company said it would be a few days before an assessment of how successful the ploy is can be made. Additional tactics are expected to be employed to increase the efficiency of the capture program.

BP has had several attempts to stop the leak fail and millions of barrels of oil have leaked into the gulf since the explosion.

U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Sunday about 140 miles of beaches have had contamination from the spill but, rather than one spill, teams are battling hundreds of smaller collections of oil across hundreds of miles and it will take months to clean the spill's aftereffects.

BP has deployed about 2,600 surface ships and 4.6 million feet of booms to try to skim off or corral floating oil.