BP’s latest efforts to staunch the flow of oil from its ruptured wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico have failed.

The ‘top kill’ operation – pumping drilling mud into the leaking well – was followed by a ‘junk shot’ to force debris into fissures in the pipe. Neither attempt worked.

BP’s chief operations officer, Doug Suttles, admitted: “We have not been able to stop the flow … This scares everybody, the fact that we can’t make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven’t succeeded so far.” (The Guardian)

The company now hopes that robot subs can slice through the damaged pipe and place a containment cap over the undersea gusher (BBC).

But the procedure has never been attempted at that depth, and the flow could now continue until August, when relief wells are due to be drilled. “We are prepared for the worst,” said Carol M. Browner, President Obama’s climate change and energy policy adviser (New York Times) – a comment which some media are already interpreting as an admission that the Deepwater Horizon spill is now America’s worst environmental disaster.