Bad news: the cap didn’t work. The 40-foot-tall, 98-ton, iron cap that BP was hoping to use to clog the leak over the weekend has become clogged itself, by “deep-sea crystals…a slushy mix of gas and water, and been tossed aside.
As Yahoo notes, the cap took two weeks to build and 3 days to put into place. During that time 85,000 barrels of oil have spilled into the Gulf.
Possible next steps include “the top hat,” a much smaller, five-foot-tall cap that might be less likely to become clogged…and, two to three weeks from now, shooting gunk, including old tires, golf balls, and mud into the blowout preventer, which was supposed to stop the leak in the first place. High-end salons are already donating hair to help clog the drain, seriously.