Storm delays BP "bottom kill" operation

A storm rapidly approaching the Louisiana coastline is threatening to delay the final part of the operation to kill the source of the world's worst offshore oil spill, US officials warned yesterday.

BP suspended work to drill a relief well to connect to the crippled Deepwater Horizon well after the National Hurricane Center said there was a 70 per cent chance of a tropical depression affecting the area over the next two days.

Computer models are predicting that the storm will move northwest and cross the spill site before making landfall in southeast Louisiana on Thursday.

US officials said that the storm could delay the planned "bottom kill" procedure by up to three days.

BP is working to permanently cap the leak by connecting a relief well and then pumping heavy mud and cement through it into the damaged Macondo well.

BP's cleanup operation passed a critical milestone last week with completion of a so-called "top kill" procedure, which saw the blown-out well subdued with injections of heavy mud that was followed by a cement seal. BP's Macondo well had been provisionally capped on 15 July after spewing an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.

Once the "bottom kill" is completed the enormous spill-response operation will switch its full attention to shoreline cleanup and long-term recovery operations. Crews are already in the process of removing protective booms from the shores of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.

The government on Tuesday reopened 5,144 square miles (13,323 sq km) of Gulf waters to commercial and recreational fishing. About 22 per cent of federal waters in the Gulf are now closed, down from 37 per cent at the height of the spill.

Meanwhile, a special judicial panel ruled that a New Orleans federal judge will oversee the civil lawsuits brought by commercial fishermen and injured workers from the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers.

Securities lawsuits lobbed at BP by stockholders angered by its steep share price declines will be combined in Houston, the US Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation decided. The British energy giant has lost over a third of its market value since the explosion.

BP has reserved $32.2 billion to pay legal claims, but analysts said the eventual bill could run well beyond that.