by Agence France-Presse. NEW ORLEANS — BP crafted a new plan Tuesday hoping to seal for good a blown-out Gulf of Mexico oil well, with the disaster set to cloud a White House summit between Britain and the United States. The U.S. government allowed BP to keep in place a cap stemming the flow from the ruptured wellhead for another 24 hours, as engineers floated a new plan to kill the well. BP said the aim would be to send down heavy drilling mud through the blowout preventer valve system that sits on top of the well and then inject cement into the wellhead to seal it. “We’re still very much in the design and planning phase,” said Kent Wells, senior BP vice president for exploration and production. “We’ve got some real experienced teams working on this over the next couple of days.” The latest plan is similar to a “top kill” effort that was tried at the end of May, when engineers spent days pumping drilling fluid into the leaking well. That effort failed to smother the gushing crude, but officials believe the outcome could be different this time with the oil flow already contained. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the disaster response, said the planning was still in initial stages, and stressed two relief wells being drilled close to the busted wellhead remain the ultimate fix. The spill, now the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, loomed large over summit talks between visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Obama. The White House said before Cameron arrived that it did not believe its showdown with BP over the spill would detract from the talks. But the energy giant is high on the list of public enemies here, with hundreds of miles of southern coastline contaminated and thousands of livelihoods ravaged. “The president is certainly looking for BP to live up to its monetary obligations to pay the damages and the fines that will be assessed as a result of this disaster,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. “Of course BP has got to do everything necessary to cap the oil well, to clean up the spill, to pay compensation,” Cameron agreed in an interview with NPR radio . “I’ve met with BP, I know they want to do that, and they will do that.” The fate of the company — which has already spent almost $4 billion on the cleanup — is a sensitive issue, since BP’s stock is the backbone of many British pension funds. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a meeting of major economies on clean energy that the administration had not yet been briefed on BP’s new plan and so had not taken a position. “We’re going to be hearing the formal proposal today and it will be evaluated,” Chu told reporters. Chu, a Nobel laureate who has been consulted every step of the way on the disaster, said he sought “the ultimate goal of stopping the leak as quickly as possible while at the same time trying to minimize oil spillage.” Five days of “integrity tests” on the tighter-fitting cap placed on the damaged wellhead last week had detected seepage and other anomalies, Allen said, but stressed they did not appear to be of major concern. He ordered BP to produce a detailed timeline for restarting operations to contain the oil with surface vessels if there is any major leakage from the wellhead and the cap has to be re-opened. The announcement last Thursday that BP had stopped the oil flow completely for the first time since April raised hopes among devastated Gulf communities that a three-month nightmare may soon be over. Measuring devices on BP’s cap have given steadily increasing high-pressure readings, indicating there are no major leaks in the wellbore that stretches 2.5 miles below the seabed. It is not known exactly how much oil has leaked into the sea, but if the upper estimate of over 4 million barrels is confirmed, the disaster would be the biggest accidental oil spill ever. Related Links: BP photoshops clean-up command center picture First half 2010 hottest ever, but is it climate change? Fate of PACE clean-energy programs about to become clearer
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BP floats new bid to seal well with cement
