The U.S. government says the final plugging of BP’s blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico will begin sometime after Labor Day. Jeffrey Carter, an aide to the government’s spill chief, told The Associated Press that the plan is first to replace a failed piece of equipment called the blowout preventer. Then BP will finish drilling a relief well it can use to plug up the blown-out well with mud and cement from the bottom, a procedure known as a bottom kill. Carter says if everything goes as planned, the final plugging will begin after Sept. 6. “That’s the anticipation, yes,” Carter says. “So long as the conditions are met.” He says the decision on the path forward was made overnight, just hours after retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told reporters he wasn’t giving a timeline. Carter says he did not know why things came together so quickly or why it will take nearly three weeks to begin the bottom kill.
Feds: BP’s gulf well to be killed after Labor Day
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