Page 22 - Well Head News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Have a terrible impact on the economy and the wildlife along the gulf coast for years to come. trace gallagher is live in venice, louisiana, with an update. >> reporter: yeah, jon. major downpour for the past 35, 40 minutes here. despite the rain and the visibility being low, we have seen a steady stream of boats and ships going back and forth to that oil spill. again, the weather is bad right now, but they're telling us over the next three or four days they hope the weather will cooperate, so they're trying to get a jump on at least attacking the oil as best they can. i want to show you some ...

1,500 people had to spend the night, they were going to be there, a nice hotel, and now they're in a high school gymnasium. >> what's on the radar? you were telling us about this earlier. this is fascinating stuff. interesting stuff here. >> this is a pretty one that hasn't been installed on the ocean floor. it's nice and painted. but blow out preventer. what is it, how does it work? it sits on top of the well. all that drilling that happened is down below this here. this is actually on the dock. but whatever. so the well would be down here, the well head here. this would sit on top of there. ...

Worked. and they simply haven't worked. officials say that they are frustrated. they don't know why the submersibles are not working. there's another backup system that could be in place and there's another control switch that could shut off the well head in the event that the rig is damaged. neither this rig nor any rig in the gulf of mexico has those because the u.s. law does not require them. other countries have them and some environmentalists believe that it could have happened. >> there are going to be a lot of changes and assessing to see how this could be corrected so it doesn't happen...

Case discharge. we did that all wait along. >> new york post said it was like apollo 13. officials of bp trying to think from a thousand miles away of how to get to the containment and trying to fix it. they can't contain the leak and they are running out of options. what should bp do. are we looking at months of this continuing? >> i think apollo 13 is a fair analogy. we have a well head on the sea floor and only acess is through remotely activated vehicles there. are rob's workog that for a number of day. that is not working. next tep try to contain the oil . that is with confer dams. we are...

When you think about this, one federal official said this is like a volcano down here. it's not on fire but that kind of pressure is coming out of here. you have all this coming out of this area. they're trying to control it. they're worried because there are bits of gravel and sand in that torrent of oil. if there is a kink in this pipe, a bend somewhere in here that could grind away at it, that could make it tear loose. then you might lose the whole well head and then you would have completely out of control flow here. that's the problem. as one lsu scientist said, this is really like a smal...