BP is scrambling to gain control of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill - the biggest environmental disaster the US has faced.
After failing again to stem the flow of oil six weeks after the spill, oil giant BP said that its latest plan to cap the well would not capture all the crude fouling the Gulf.
And the two relief wells currently being drilled - which are supposed to be a better long-term solution - will not be completed for at least two months.
"The relief well at the end of August is certainly the end - the end point on this game," Robert Dudley, BP's managing director, said. "But we failed to wrestle the beast to the ground."
That means the relief well will not be completed until the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season.
The crude probably will not affect the formation of storms, but the cyclones could push the oil deeper into coastal marshes and estuaries and turn the oil into a crashing black surf.
White House energy adviser Carol Browner said there was more oil spilling into the Gulf than at any other time in history. "This is probably the biggest environmental disaster we've ever faced in this country," she said.
The latest effort to curb that disaster, known as the "top kill", failed after engineers tried for three days to overwhelm the crippled well with heavy drilling mud and junk 5,000 feet underwater.
And scepticism is growing that BP can solve the crisis. Republican Ed Markey, who leads a congressional committee investigating the disaster,said he had "no confidence whatsoever in BP".
BP hopes to saw through a pipe leading out from the well and cap it with a funnel-like device using the same remotely guided undersea robots that have failed in other attempts to stop the leak. Even that effort will not end the disaster - BP has only pledged it will capture a majority of the oil. None of the remaining options would stop the flow entirely or capture all the crude before it reaches the Gulf's waters.
