NEW ORLEANS, July 11 (UPI) -- BP said Sunday the replacement of the containment cap on its runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was proceeding as planned.
Undersea robots popped the existing cap from the gusher Saturday and began the long task of installing a new and presumably better sealing cap over the crippled blow-out preventer, BP said in a written statement.
The blow-out preventer failed to work the day the Deepwater Horizon caught fire and eventually sank in the Gulf with the loss of 11 crewmen.
The salvage vessel Discoverer Enterprise was moving back into position Sunday to reconnect the capture system with help from favorable weather and seas. Once hooked up, the vessel Helix Producer will begin collecting crude. The maneuver is expected to increase the amount of oil captured from around 15,000 barrels per day to 25,000 bpd by mid-week. After two or three weeks, the containment should top 60,000 bpd, the amount of oil estimated to be currently flowing from the well, BP Senior Vice President Keith Wells said.
"As we start to ramp up the additional containment capacity, we should see less and less flow," Wells told CNN.
Meanwhile, the threat of drifting oil to the Texas coast appeared to be on the wane this weekend. Coast Guard reconnaissance crews told the Houston Chronicle they had not seen any slicks near the beaches of Galveston.
Tar balls that hit the Texas coast last week were still being analyzed to see if they came from the Deepwater Horizon leak or from some other source. Tar balls are fairly common along Gulf Coast beaches.
