Small Setback in Effort to Cap Oil in Gulf

In their latest setback in stopping the flow of crude oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, BP officials said on Saturday that they had failed to insert a mile-long tube into the riser of the leaking well on Friday night. But they hoped to reattach the pipe by late Saturday night, said BP’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles.

“When they attempted to connect to it, the frame shifted, so they were unable to make the connection,” Mr. Suttles said at a news conference in Robert, La. Workers had to pull the device back to the surface to make adjustments, he said. Officials hope that the pipe, when connected, will help siphon oil into a tanker on the surface of the Gulf.The problem in this failed attempt, he said, had little to do with cold temperatures or high pressure that had foiled last week’s effort to cap the flow of leaking oil with a containment dome.

“It was just a mechanical act of taking a 5,000-foot long stream of pipe and connecting it to the tool,” Mr. Suttles said.

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 people and rupturing the well 5,000 feet below the surface. BP officials say the well is leaking 210,000 gallons of oil a day — an amount that some experts say is actually much higher.

Earlier in the day, the Obama administration released a letter it sent to BP, saying that the company would be responsible for those costs — not the American taxpayers — even if the cleanup exceeded the $75 million statutory liability cap.

Ken Salazar, the secretary of the Interior, and Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, sought assurances from BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, that the company would not refuse compensation to “individuals or others harmed by the oil spill.”

“The public has a right to a clear understanding of BP’s commitment to redress all of the damage that has occurred or that will occur in the future as a result of the oil spill,” Mr. Salazar and Ms. Napolitano wrote.

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BP and the United States Coast Guard also said on Saturday that one cleanup method seemed to be working. The application of undersea dispersants chemicals appeared to be successful in diminishing a small portion of the oil “in the immediate vicinity of the well,” Mr. Suttles said. One week ago on Saturday, BP officials admitted that their containment dome — thought to be the best immediate effort to collect a large portion of the leaking oil — had failed when ice-like crystals formed and rendered the 100-ton device ineffective.

Officials have a smaller structure, called a top hat, waiting on the seabed to be maneuvered over the biggest leak.

Meanwhile, officials are drilling a relief well to intersect with the leaking well. Officials said it had reached 9,000 feet below the ocean surface, about halfway to the planned intersection point. That will likely not begin siphoning oil for another couple of months.

If BP officials cannot successfully attach this pipe, it has another option waiting: the “junk shot.”

BP will resort to using golf balls, rope, plastic cubes and other miscellany to clog the plumbing of the safety mechanism known as the blowout preventer, and force the oil to stop flowing.

“We shall not rest, we shall not take a day off until we get this problem resolved,” Mr. Salazar said at the news conference.