good morning. good morning, tony. an historic vote expected to begin in a few moments. this stt bill that is supposed to reform wall street. it s supposed to be the answer to the scary days we saw almost two years ago when the u.s. economy was teetering on a cliff and so much of the economic pain that americans have felt since. this is the final hurdle for this mainly democratic passed bill. bp s latest effort to stop the oil gusher in the gulf appears to be on track. day 87 and testing on that new well cap is expected to get under way this afternoon. we expect a briefing from admiral thad allen any moment now. we will bring that to you live. right now, let s bring in david mattingly in new orleans. walk us through this, if you would, please. the leak is fixed and progress is expected later today? reporter: that s right. what happened last night is when they closed that initial valve and shut off the oil that was coming out of the top of that
and we were told today that that relief well is about 30 feet away from wear it will intersect, and we re going to hear from admiral thad allen shortly about the progress of everything here. 30 feet, that s really close. looks like progress happening now. let s get to the retired admiral thad allen for the daily update. take a look at the implications of the test related to pressures in the wellbore and make sure we exhausted every means to consider low probability high consequence outcomes. once that was done, i gave the order with some slight modifications to include some requirements for seismic testing, acoustic testing to go ahead and proceed last night. the sequence on how that test proceeded was to take the q4000 and helix producer off line, to have all of the oil and hydrocarbons coming up through the new capping stack. at that point there were three
cap, that s when they noticed that there was a leak in what they call the choke line. well, over night, they were able to remove that choke line, replace it. it s fixed, good to go. that was told to us a couple of hours ago, and bp also saying that they expected later this morning to be able to get started with that testing again where they would close off this cap and do all of those important pressure readings every few hours to see if this well might be leaking down below. if they re able to build up pressure, that s good news. it shows it s intact and now leaking below. if there is light pressure, there is leaking below. we re at a critical point. that delay was a disappointment but the fact that they were able to replace it so quickly and get back on track is encouraging. we are expected to hear from admiral thad allen shortly. yesterday he said he didn t want to get anyone s hopes up about this but while they re pursuing