99th day of the BP oil spill

By: Jessica Tobin

It has now been nearly 3 months since the BP troubles started and oil starting leaking into the Gulf. BP placed a cap on the well Monday morning after 3 days of preparation in hopes that this will stop the leaking at least temporarily. Engineers started running tests the cap to see if it would hold pressure. The engineers will start by slowly shutting off 3 valves. They will wait around 6 hours to see if the oil pressure can be held by the cap. The goal is about 8,000 – 9,000 lbs per square inch of the well. Even if this cap works, there is still a lot to be done. The blown-out well needs to be plugged up and that won’t happen until mid-august at the earliest because one of the relief valves has to be drilled down far enough to reach it. As of Tuesday, the 84^th day of the incident, 90.4 and 178.6 million gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico.