The best hope for capturing oil flowing from a ruptured well 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) until a permanent fix is found was hanging about 200 feet above the sea floor Friday afternoon.

Crews were working to move into place and lower a 100-ton purpose-made, box-shaped “containment dome” over the largest of two remaining leaks resulting from the apparent blowout of the well last month (see Daily GPI, May 6).

“This is a very large device and it needs to be very precisely placed,” BP plc COO Doug Suttles told reporters Friday. The placement of such a device has never been attempted in waters as deep as the spill site location.

BP is the majority owner and operator of the lease on Mississippi Canyon Block 252 where the well was hemorrhaging an estimated 5,000 b/d, or about 210,000 gal/day, of crude.

Responders hoped to have the dome in place by the end of Friday and connected to a drillship at the sea surface over the weekend. Operations to collect the oil and process it aboard the drillship were to begin Monday, it was hoped.

In processing, the resulting gas will be flared, water will be discharged to the sea, and the remaining oil will be stored onboard the ship and lightered as needed. The resulting oil could end up being sold, Suttles said, but he did not have any details Friday.

Meanwhile, drilling continues on a relief well, which responders hope will be a permanent fix to the leaks, which are coming from a crumpled riser on the sea floor. A relief well could take up to 90 days to complete.

Responders have now given up on trying to activate the nonfunctioning blowout preventer using remotely controlled submarines, Suttles said. “We worked on that for essentially two weeks. We have at least two other options…”

One of the options is to inject materials, such as “rubber cuttings” to try to plug up the well. “Some people have referred to it as like plugging up a toilet…We don’t want to do anything that can make the situation worse,” he said.

The second option Suttles spoke of Friday is to put another blowout preventer on top of the nonfunctioning one. “That’s a very complicated task,” he said. “Those options are being studied while we put the containment dome in place and drill the relief well.”

Also on Friday, the National Oceanic and Aeronautics Administration (NOAA) modified and expanded the boundaries of the closed fishing area to better reflect the location of the spill. It also extended the fishing restriction until May 17.

The closed area now represents slightly less than 4.5% of GOM federal waters. The original closure boundaries, which took effect May 2, encompassed less than 3%. The vast majority of Gulf waters has not been affected by the spill and continues to support productive fisheries and tourism activities, NOAA said.

According to NOAA, there are 3.2 million recreational fishermen in the GOM region who took 24 million fishing trips in 2008. Commercial fishermen in the Gulf harvested more than one billion pounds of finfish and shellfish in 2008.

NOAA is working with state governors to evaluate the need to declare a fisheries disaster. The states of Louisiana and Mississippi have requested a federal fisheries disaster be declared.

According to the U.S. Coast Guard and BP, as of Friday, 256 vessels were responding to the spill; 788,085 feet of boom had been deployed with nearly 1.29 million feet still available; about 1.89 million gallons of oil and water (roughly 90% water) had been recovered; more than 267,000 gallons of oil dispersant had been used with more than 317,000 gallons available.

On Thursday Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar said that because of the rig explosion and spill, beginning April 20 — the date of the incident — no applications for drilling permits will go forward for any new offshore drilling activity until the Department of Interior completes a safety review requested by President Obama.

“To be clear, ongoing oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico is continuing, and the Department of Interior is verifying that those operations are in compliance with all laws and regulations,” said Lars Herbst of Interior’s Minerals Management Service.

Herbst said 30 drilling rigs had been inspected and no urgent cause for concern had been found. Inspectors on Friday were examining deepwater production facilities.

House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA) was to lead a bipartisan delegation of committee members to the GOM on Friday. The delegation was expected conduct a flyover of the oil spill with experts from the U.S. Geological Service and the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration and be briefed by the USCG, the Department of Interior, and others.

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