Page 2 - Top Kill Operation News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

To figure out who to give immunity too? >> absolutely. that's the most important thing, to give someone immunity, you can't take it back. once they actually testify under a grant of immunity, it's effectively impossible to prosecute them. prosecutors try to be very judicious and give immunity in circumstances where they really need the testimony, and they really can accept that this person is going to escape prosecution. that's a judgment you can make only at the beginning of the operation, not at the end. >> jeff toobin, thanks very much. joe following some other breaking news for us in the...

That was the one that for reference purposes was involved in the top kill operation. before the disaster, bp said it was capable of skimming 500,000 barrels of oil per day over the course of 77 days. it has only come to 60% of that. did bp just wildly overestimate what it could do or in the wake of this, does the industry fundamentally have to rethink its capabilities? >> there is a lot of rethinking that goes in place. a lot of the oil spill response was put in place following the valdez incident. that's a completely different style of incident and a different order of magnitude. once the oil...

Well from leaking. about it seems to me that what we are left with now is waiting for this relief well to be drilled and that will happen sometime in august. so today is june 17. back in 1979, the ipox-1 took nine months to cap after drilling several relief wells and that was only 160 feet down into the ocean. while this well is 5,000 feet bloat surface of the ocean. have you abandoned any other efforts to kill this well? are we at the point where bp is doing nothing until relief well gets down there or are you try something other way to kill the well before you get a relief well down there? i...

Reservoir, we tried to kill the well from the top using a top kill operation and the pressures in the well are such that it's not possible to do that, so we have to rely on the relief wells. in the interim, we are continuing to contain as much of the oil as we can. and that operation is currently containing 20,000 barrels a day. by the end of this month, we'll have the ability to contain between 40,000 and 50,000 barrels a day. and by the middle of jewuly, between 60,000 and 80,000 barrels a day. >> i'll ask the same question they asked other oil company executives. why wouldn't you just drill...

Capture more oil? >> it's called a q4000, the same rig they used in the top kill operation. they tried to shoot the heavy mud down and they're reversing the process. using the rig to siphon oil out. once they get it onboard they mix it with compressed air, shoot it down a boom and ignite it with a special flair. the hope is to burn off millions of gallons of oil. sometime over the next two to three days they hope to be fully operational. it started about 12 hours ago. >> shepard: there's been a lot of reaction to the speech from the president last night but i'm curious about the idea of the $2...