By DPA,
Washington: British Petroleum (BP) has stopped the flow in one of three leaks in the Gulf of Mexico oil rupture, the US Coast Guard said.
“They were able to patch one of the holes,” Petty Officer David Mosley was quoted by the Times Picayune newspaper as saying Wednesday morning.
CNN reported that the patch was in the form of a slip valve, on the smallest of the three leaks.
Meanwhile, BP had finished building a 100-tonne dome to place over another of the leaks to collect the gushing oil and siphon it up to a drill ship awaiting on the surface, CNN reported.
The leak closure marked the first progress in the two weeks of futile efforts to stem the flow of 5,000 barrels of oil a day from the 6,000-metre-deep well.
Mosley told the Times Picayune that the leak was stopped by an underwater robot which was able to put a valve over the hole and close it.
Tuesday, BP said that work to seal off the ruptured oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico could take three months, while concerns rose that oil was washing up on a chain of islands off Louisiana.
Twenty boats had been sent to the uninhabited Chandeleur Islands on the easternmost tip of Louisiana to investigate reports of oil reaching the shore, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles told a news conference in Mobile, Alabama.
BP and US Coast Guard officials said the current trajectory of the oil slick showed it likely wouldn’t reach land for the next three days because of improved weather, which has enabled response teams to lay additional booms, which are floating barriers to stop or slow the advance of oil.