NEW ORLEANS, July 28 (UPI) -- U.S. officials overseeing the response to the 100-day old oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico said Wednesday "things continue to be stable" at the wellhead.
National Incident Commander Thad Allen told reporters at a briefing in New Orleans crews ran three tests on the well Tuesday to help develop a picture of conditions on the ocean floor.
"Out at the wellhead, things continue to be stable," Allen said.
"So far, we have found no anomalies that we haven't been able to clear up, and it looks like everything's in good shape out there."
Allen said he would meet this week with regional leaders in Louisiana to talk about the operation and "some other things that are important to the parish presidents."
Efforts to extinguish the fire following the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion may have helped sink the oil rig, ABC News reported Wednesday.
Interviews and documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity reveal the decision to fight the blaze with salt water rather than fire-suppressing foam may have overwhelmed the ballasts keeping the rig afloat, the report said. That may have caused the rig, leased by British oil producer BP, to list and then sink, ABC said.
"The joint investigation is absolutely looking into that, and whether it contributed to the sinking," Capt. Ronald A. LaBrec, the U.S. Coast Guard's chief spokesman, told the center.
Coast Guard officials told the center it lacks the expertise to fight a fire aboard an oil rig and did not have ships equipped to combat the blaze nearby. ABC said the Coast Guard has yet to determine whether those boats or the rig operator had access to fire-retardant foam, the preferred suppressant for combating an oil-based fire.
The Coast Guard's policy is to coordinate the response to a rig fire, rather than join in the firefighting efforts. However, ABC said the joint Coast Guard-Interior Department investigation produced testimony that the Coast Guard had little success coordinating the response in the Deepwater Horizon disaster that claimed 11 lives and dumped tens of millions of gallons into the gulf before it was capped July 15.
White House assistant press secretary Bill Burton told reporters Wednesday he wouldn't comment on the ongoing investigation other than to say "the administration is doing everything it can to look into the cause of the tragedy that took those lives and created one of the biggest natural environmental catastrophes in the history of our country. And we're looking forward to hearing the results of that investigation."
Burton said while there has been "a lot of progress on cleaning up some of the oil that's spilled" in the 100 days since the accident, President Obama's "view is that we're not going to rest until we ensure that we've cleaned up all the oil, restored the damage that's happened to the gulf, and make sure that the people of that region are whole again."
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar visited three offshore drilling rigs in the gulf Wednesday to observe inspections and safety equipment.
