BP Sticks With Cap-and-Plug Plan

By Eileen Fleming

New Orleans, La. – BP is sticking with the idea of containing the oil offshore with a cap and plug. It will be shipping a much smaller dome it calls a "top hat" to cap leaking pipes, while engineers prepare to plug the leak itself with scraps of material, called a junk shot.
Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles cautions that both are untried remedies for a leak a mile under water.

"The top hat goes on top of the riser leak which is not at the blowout preventer, where the junk shot is actually inside of the blowout preventer. So these things, we could end up doing both or we could end up doing one or the other, depending on how the final analysis turns out."

The small dome should be at the site this week. The plugging operation should start next week. The Coast Guard continues skimming and burning some of the oil off the surface.
For NPR News, I'm Eileen Fleming in New Orleans.