BP: 'We have not yet stopped the flow'

VENICE, La., May 28 (UPI) -- The "top kill" attempt to stop oil from fouling the Gulf of Mexico "hasn't yet achieved its objective" of staunching the flow, a BP official said.

In the top kill operation, drilling mud is pumped into the head of the leaking well on the sea floor.

Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said Thursday: "We have not yet stopped the flow, so the operation hasn't yet achieved its objective, but what we do believe we have done is successfully pumped some of this mud into the well bore. But clearly, we need to pump more," the Houston Chronicle reported.

Suttles said the company would continue using the top kill method but would adjust the effort to include debris such as rubber balls and other "bridging agents" to help clog the leak, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported Friday.

BP is working to stop leaks on a pipe attached to the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, which the oil giant leased from Transocean. The rig exploded on April 20 and sank two days later. Eleven rig workers were killed.

The well has been leaking between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels of oil per day since the explosion, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The top kill process stopped and started several times since it began Wednesday. Officials said they noticed the mud escaping out of a riser pipe, instead of being pumped into the well, and were concerned it could indicate the fluid was creating more leaks, The Times-Picayune reported.

Suttles said, however, there was no indication the mud was creating new leaks.

BP will supplement the effort with "bridging agents" to keep the mud inside the pipe, Suttles said. The next round of pumping could include a "junk shot," a high-powered shooting of debris into the well to clog it.

"The purpose of using a bridging material or junk shot ensures that the mud goes down the wellbore instead of out of the riser," Suttles said. "If bridging agents and junk shots do its purpose, there would be less mud coming out."

The spill has taken its toll on Louisiana's ecologically sensitive coastal marshes, where heavy oil has been covering plants, animals and marine life. On the eve of the Memorial Day holiday weekend, beaches along Grand Isle were empty, CNN reported.

"If only it gets stopped, if what they did yesterday works, that's the beginning of the end," Grand Isle Tourism Commissioner Josie Cheramie said. "We can clean up what's already been put out there, but we just really need to get it stopped. That's the main thing."