BP Mulls New Options for Containing Oil

After BP struck out with its first attempt to contain the oil gushing from the Gulf floor, the company is now exploring a Plan B. Crews have brought new equipment to the leak site, the Associated Press reports, while the petroleum giant considers a technique known as “top kill,” in which a vessel “uses a tube to shoot mud and concrete directly into the well's blowout preventer.” For now, crews plan to “park” the huge containment box that they’d hoped would stop the flow of oil about 1,600 feet from the leak site; the box failed to work on Saturday, after icelike crystals formed inside it. The attempt was highly experimental: A containment device had never been lowered to such depths. Yet BP’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, is hesitant to claim defeat: "I wouldn't say it's failed yet... What I would say is what we attempted to do... didn't work."