Gulf oil spill

BP has said that its "top kill" strategy for plugging a ruptured well that is gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico has failed.

Efforts by engineers to pump drilling fluid into the leaking well head in order to smother the gushing crude failed, but BP officials said they didn't know why.

"We don't know that for certain," BP Chief Operations Officer Doug Suttles told a press briefing, adding that "we were unable to sustainably overcome the flow."

The British oil giant has said it will resort to a new strategy to try to top the leak, but it won't be put into place for almost a week.

The news of the failure was a blow to residents around the Gulf coast, whose communities are still recovering from the 2005 Hurricane Katrina and now have to contend with oil invading fragile marshlands and waters vital to wildlife and the region's lucrative commercial fishing industry.

Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser was about to address a crowd when he got news of the top kill failure. "I didn't have the heart to tell them it didn't work," he told broadcaster CNN.

'Enraging' failure

The setback comes just one day after US President Barak Obama visited the site of the worst oil spill in US history. President Obama called the failure "enraging" and "heartbreaking."

An estimated 20 million gallons of oil have gushed into the ocean since the accident aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, which killed 11 workers.

Officials in the US state of Louisiana, which has been badly effected by the spill, have called on BP to create a 300-million-dollar fund to mitigate the immediate and long-term impact of the spill on businesses and local residents.

State agencies also sent a letter to BP seeking 372 million euros ($457 million) for a food-safety fund, warning that "the future of this industry is in peril."

smh/AFP/dpa
Editor: Kyle James