BP Plc's stricken oil well showed no sign of leaking on Friday after a new cap stopped crude from flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, but President Barack Obama cautioned there was more work to do before the guusher was permanently stopped BP was conducting a pressure test after it choked off the well on Thursday.
Underwater robots scanned the sea floor for signs of oil leaks, which could happen if the undersea well is damaged. "We've seen no negative evidence of any breaching there," said Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president of exploration and production.
-- Obama says more work to be done
-- BP likely to move back to oil siphoning after test
Obama, speaking at the White House, cautiously welcomed the news. "We won't be done until we actually know that we've killed the well and that we have a permanent solution in place. We're moving in that direction, but I don't want us to get too far ahead of ourselves." BP's shares rose in London on Friday on hopes that it has at last been able to stop the oil that has been leaking into the Gulf of Mexico for the past three months and can focus on the cleanup.
It was the first time BP managed to cap the flow since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 men and caused the worst offshore oil spill in US history. Estimates vary widely of BP's total costs, which will run on for many years as lawsuits wind their way through courts. Three analysts surveyed by Reuters Insider television forecast BP will spend between $63 billion to $100 billion over the next 15 years in fines, cleanup costs and legal costs while analyst Peter Hutton at NCB Securities in London pegs total costs at $40 billion. BP's shares in London were up more than 2 percent on Friday. US were shares down around 3 percent after closing up 7.6 percent on Thursday.
The battered shares more than halved in value during the first two months of the crisis, but have bounced by more than 40 percent since touching a low in late June. About $65 billion has been wiped off BP's market value since the rig explosion.
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee said it had scheduled a hearing on July 29 into BP's actions in last year's release of a Libyan convicted of the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie. The test, which could last up to 48 hours, gauges pressure in the well to assess its condition. Officials said the test would show whether the cap can safely shut off the flow from the well if oil-capture vessels at the surface must disconnect in the event of a hurricane.
BP is likely to release the flow of oil again after the test is done - siphoning it to ships on the ocean surface in an improved system able to handle up to 80,000 barrels a day until it can seal the well permanently. That should be more than enough to capture the whole well output, as estimates put the spill rate at between 35,000 barrels (1.47 million gallons/5.56 million liters) and 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons/9.5 million liters) a day. The British energy giant still expects to complete drilling a new well by early August to intersect the ruptured well - which extends 2.5 miles (4 km) under the seabed - and seal it with mud and cement.
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