The Gulf of Mexico:
Crews working to seal BP's blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico once and for all need to finish one more test on a cement plug before declaring the well permanently dead, officials said on Saturday.
Once the pressure and weight test was finished and officials were confident the seal would hold permanently, the well would be declared dead, according to the offshore installation manager on the Development Driller III vessel.
That was expected to occur late on Saturday, but an announcement may not come until Sunday.
Even aboard the Development Driller III - the ship that drilled the relief well and allowed crews to pump in the cement for the plug - celebrations were muted on Saturday.
The DDIII crew began finishing their work on Thursday, when the relief well being drilled intersected BP's blown-out well.
The cement - which will permanently plug the blown-out well from the bottom - started flowing on Friday.
It had hardened by Saturday, leaving only the pressure test.
Until the test was finished, men in red work suits and mud-splattered hardhats were operating heavy hydraulic machines being used to lift the drill pipe back to the deck of the DDIII vessel.
Two men sitting in black leather chairs used joysticks to maneouvre the massive machines on the deck, which were lifting the equipment that was thousands of feet (metres) below.
The impending death of BP's blown-out oil well will bring one piece of the catastrophe that began five months ago to an anticlimactic end - after all, the gusher was capped in July.
This, though, is an important milestone for the still-weary residents of the Gulf Coast: an assurance that not so much as a trickle of oil will ever seep from the well that already has ruined so much since the disaster first started.
The tragedy began on 20 April, when an explosion killed 11 workers, sank a drilling rig and led to the worst offshore oil spill in US history.
The well spewed 206 (m) million gallons (778 million litres) of oil until the gusher was first stopped in mid-July with a temporary cap.
Once the pressure and weight test was finished and officials were confident the seal would hold permanently, the well would be declared dead, according to the offshore installation manager on the Development Driller III vessel.
That was expected to occur late on Saturday, but an announcement may not come until Sunday.
Even aboard the Development Driller III - the ship that drilled the relief well and allowed crews to pump in the cement for the plug - celebrations were muted on Saturday.
The DDIII crew began finishing their work on Thursday, when the relief well being drilled intersected BP's blown-out well.
The cement - which will permanently plug the blown-out well from the bottom - started flowing on Friday.
It had hardened by Saturday, leaving only the pressure test.
Until the test was finished, men in red work suits and mud-splattered hardhats were operating heavy hydraulic machines being used to lift the drill pipe back to the deck of the DDIII vessel.
Two men sitting in black leather chairs used joysticks to maneouvre the massive machines on the deck, which were lifting the equipment that was thousands of feet (metres) below.
The impending death of BP's blown-out oil well will bring one piece of the catastrophe that began five months ago to an anticlimactic end - after all, the gusher was capped in July.
This, though, is an important milestone for the still-weary residents of the Gulf Coast: an assurance that not so much as a trickle of oil will ever seep from the well that already has ruined so much since the disaster first started.
The tragedy began on 20 April, when an explosion killed 11 workers, sank a drilling rig and led to the worst offshore oil spill in US history.
The well spewed 206 (m) million gallons (778 million litres) of oil until the gusher was first stopped in mid-July with a temporary cap.
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