Pressure mounts on BP to contain oil leak

British oil company BP is coming under increasing pressure to contain the millions of litres of oil that have been streaming into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20, following the explosion on the offshore Deepwater Horizon rig that it had been operating.

Reuters

As images of coated pelicans, ruined marshlands and fragile shorelines dominated newspapers and angered US residents, BP placed ads in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on Monday.

The ads claimed BP could be trusted to stop and clean the spill and that they were pledging up to 500 million dollars to study its impact.

BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said a so-called "top kill" operation, to inject heavy drilling fluid into the leak and then hopefully seal the well with cement, would now begin Wednesday morning.

"We are going to give it every shot," Suttles told CNN, estimating chances of success to be six or seven out of 10.

President Barack Obama's administration, under pressure itself for its response to the crisis, insisted the federal government was bearing down on BP.

"If we find that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Sunday, blasting BP for missing "deadline after deadline" to cap the leak.

"Do I have confidence that they know exactly what they're doing? No, not completely," he said.

If Wednesday's attempt fails, relief wells to divert the flow and allow the leaking well to be sealed will not be ready until August at the earliest.