BP looks for another oil leak fix

NEW ORLEANS, May 9 (UPI) -- BP engineers Sunday worked to staunch the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico after the placement of a dome over a leaking well failed, officials said.

Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating official, said engineers didn't anticipated gas hydrates -- crystal formations of natural gas and water formed under pressure -- would clog the structure's opening because it was too big to blocked, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. But crystals did form, clogging the opening at the top of the containment box that was to have channeled the oil into lines connected to a barge.

The engineers now are trying to determine whether there is "a way to overcome this problem," Suttles said.

The hydrates could be dislodged by raising the dome, but BP teams must determine how to prevent them from forming at the leak 5,000 feet deep.

While engineers try to to stop the hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil flowing daily from the Deephaven Horizon oil rig that exploded April 20, the U.S. Coast Guard said tar balls were beginning to wash up on Alabama's Dauphin Island.

If the blobs are oil, officials said Alabama would be the easternmost landfall from the spill, confined so far to Louisiana and Mississippi. Officials said the substance was being analyzed.

The massive spill threatens to upend life along the Louisiana coast, where the fishing industry is intertwined with oil-and-gas drilling, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported Sunday. The two industries provide a steady labor market for area communities and offer alternative employment opportunities in bad economic times, locals said.

"People almost want us to come out and hate the oil companies," Eric Drury, the youngest of the three brothers in a fishing family, told the Times-Picayune. "Before people put their foot in their mouth, they need to understand what's going on. We need (drilling). It goes hand in hand with our family and our industry in Louisiana."