Page 6 - Pressure Testing News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

This is a containment strategy, this is not designed to fix the problem completely. and the president near the end of his remarks in the rose garden today tried to drive that message home. let's take a quick listen. >> there were a lot of reports coming out in the media that seemed to indicate, well maybe this thing is done. 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. >> reporter: exactly, that is the message the white house wants to con...

Turns out that we can't keep the containment cap onto completely stop the oil it's going to allow us to capture much more oil and we'll see less oil flowing into the gulf. jon: senior white house correspondent major garrett is here with more . that's the optimistic side of the story. the president is trying to tamp down public enthusiasm, why? >> reporter: this has been an economic, ecological crisis and also a visual one. the country has, as soon as bp made available a few days after the spill those images from the seafloor of the spilling natural gas and oil, a visual crisis for the country....

And kill and it stop it at the source. this is merely an intermediate step to contain the oil pending the finishing the relief wells and plugging the hole. >> reporter: but work on two relief wells, what bp calls the permanent solution, has been suspended while the company does the pressure testing on the containment cap. the man in charge of the $20 billion bp victims' fund expects payments to start. >> i am beholden only to the people of the gulf. i work for you. >> reporter: next month, bp turns over the entire claims operation to him. with so many disappointments and failed attempts, the o...

On there, replace it, and now they're back on track to get this all-important pressure testing of this well going again. they've got a lot of things they've got to do now. they've got to test the seal. they've got to bring the rovs back online. again, they are back on track. this leak costing them probably about 24 hours in this process, but they are prepared to move forward again. another bit of good news that we found out in the technical briefing was that the oil we saw spewing out in the gulf was only a fraction of the oil that's coming out of there. they were able to restore the collectio...

Into their proper positions, they're going to be able to move forward once again with the pressure testing. they anticipate this will happen sometime later today, martha. martha: that was what i was going to ask you. i tkpes the biggest question in everyone's mind, this picture we've been looking at now for 87 days, when does that picture dramatically change, when do we stop seeing the billowing plumes of oil moving into the water? >> reporter: they anticipate that once this testing gets underway, if all goes well, if it appears the cap and the well are holding up to the increasing pressure, a...