Page 5 - Drilling Process News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

capping out of all that oil gushing into the gulf of mexico. workers have managed to insert a four-inch tube down to the spill site, capturing some of the leaking oil and pumping it to a ship on the surface of the gulf. after weeks of bad news, they're calling it a positive step forward. >> we ran the -- they call it the riser insertion tube tool. and they ran it last night and started to get oil up to the surface into the drill ship. then we had a small problem and the tool came out of the riser, but they got that reinserted this morning and as we speak, there is oil going into the ...

Going to be able to siphon off and prevent from going into the environment. that's been the full focus of this operation, is to stem the flow of oil not water. and at this point, bp can't say exactly how much they're going to succeed at doing that. >> can you answer this next question, where do we go from here, what's next in this process, david? >> what's next, now that they've tak taken this step to stem the floesh flow, they have to stop the flow. they're looking at injecting a substance called kill mud. it's not organic mud like you would find outside. this is a solution that they use in t...

Today an investigation from national public radio shows the gulf spill may be ten times worse than first estimated. h so far bp has not been able to cap the leak. also rising to the surface today there is new criticism of government oversight of the drilling process. today president obama said the system failed badly. >> for too long, for a decade or more, there's been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill. it seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies. that cannot and...

Exploretary well exploded and set in motion the massive oil spill threatening the entire gulf of mexico, the interior department exempted the oil company from intense regulatory scrutiny. they were granted what is known as categorical exemption from the minimal management service which reports to the interior secretary ken salazar. that means the exploratory drilling process and plans to deal with a spill if one should occur evaded several environmental reviews. >> they cut corners and went straight to drilling the other activities and didn't even take a look at some of the mitigation and reme...

This is the only device that they have that's capable of doing this. this say one of a kind job, never, ever tried before. >> so, david, this i take it is a temporary fix, it's just to stop the oil from spewing out. long-term, what do they plan to do? >> reporter: that's right. this is going to go over the largest of the leaks. they've got two leaks they have to cap still. this is go going over the largest of those leaks. it's going to funnel that oil to a containment vessel on the surface. it's going to contain 80% to 85% of the oil. so the leak will not be completely stopped once it gets dow...