BP's third attempt to plug the oil leak

After two unsucessful attempts to plug the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, British Petroleum on Monday, will begin its third attempt to plug the leak, amidst pressure from both the government and the people to resolve the situation as soon as possible.

The latest procedure that BP seems to be interested in, involves slicing off the leaking pipe at the top of the well's broken blow-out preventer, placing a cap over the leak and channeling the captured oil and gas to a vessel on the surface. BP officials said the procedure could take from four days to a week, and it already has two different caps on the ocean floor, ready to be deployed.

This approach was not utilised by BP earlier because they feared that the kinks in the pipe still attached to the blowout preventer would act as a choke on the leak and removing the pipe would lead to a more violent surge of oil.

According to BP officials, the latest procedure will involve use of robots to to slice off the leaking riser pipe where it connects to the blow-out preventer, the huge stack of valves that sits on the seabed atop the ruptured well. After that a containment cap with a rubber seal would be placed over the cut riser and oil and gas would be drawn to a ship using a pipe.

BP is being pressured by the Obama administration to come up with a quick solution to the problem. This is due to the fact that the Obama administration is trying to minimize the political damage done to the image of President Barack Obama.

BP officials have said that they are confident that the new procedure would be a success and would not make the spill worse.