Page 17 - Well Head News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

These slots around the ship. we were watching funnel clouds but it's churning up quite a bit of fury and that is the kind of weather and wave action which is six foot high that hampered the 550 skimming vessels that are out there. a whale is so large it can do well in these conditions. it will be interesting how it performed over the weekend when the coastguard divulges that information but well below the oil that is floating on the surface. 5,000 feet below, a lot of work is being done. 76 straight days thanks to robots and joysticks. >> they are the underwater workhorses in fight to stem the...

Magnetic field around the well bore and come in a little closer. the original date for the relief well to be done was the middle of august. they are slightly ahead of schedule, but i think we need to underpromise and overdeliver in terms of schedule here so i'll stick with the middle of august but we could be sooner than that. >> you think you will meet your goal? >> right now they look on track for the middle of august, yes, they do. >> is there a backup plan if this relief well does not work? >> there are several, suzanne. first of all, there's a second relief well-being drilled, down around...

And continues to go down 2 or 300 feet at a time, continues to close the well bore, put electrical sensing device down, check the magnetic field to find out how far they are away. they're in their third series of these ranging activities. they'll continue to do that over the next several weeks as they get to the optimum point where they can turn and intercept the well head. we are on -- we are ready to connect the helix producer to the vertical riser package that's been out there as soon as we get the sea state to do that. it's going have to drop to three to five feet. at the end of the flexib...

Containment ship out to its well head because of potential rough seas. and let the q and a begin. supreme court nominee elena kagan being grilled by the senate judiciary committee today. the first real heat of the confirmation hearing coming very early on. republican senator jeff sessions challenging her opinion of the military, focusing on one specific policy position. take a listen. >> i do oppose the don't ask, don't tell policy. >> and you did then. >> and i did then. >> and you -- in '03, not long after you had been -- became president, you said, quote, i abhor the military's discrimina...

>> you know, keith, i happen to agree with whoever doug r. is. i believe that the best option for bp right now is to keep the well flowing as much as they can. any effort to close the well in or to restrict the flow could cause more damage down in the hole and cause that flow around the well head we talked about earlier this month. >> so is it potentially if not unstoppable virtually unstoppable? >> on the surface, keith, it's essentially unstoppable. the best they can do now is to gather as much of the oil as they can from the seafloor through these different risers that they're installing. t...