bp says it s expecting the latest attempt to be the one that does the trick. capping out of all that oil gushing into the gulf of mexico. workers have managed to insert a four-inch tube down to the spill site, capturing some of the leaking oil and pumping it to a ship on the surface of the gulf. after weeks of bad news, they re calling it a positive step forward. we ran the they call it the riser insertion tube tool. and they ran it up night and started to get oil up to the surface into the drill ship. then we had a small problem and the tool came out of the riser, but they got that reinserted this morning and as we speak, there is oil going into the drill ship. so we need to get a bit more time with it to see how effective it can be, but it is working. cnn s david mattingly covering this story from the very beginning. david, is this the real deal or is it spin? what s going on here? reporter: it is the real deal in the sense that they re finally able to siphon some of that lea
leventhal live in grand aisisle louisiana with the latest on the containment effort. reporter: bp says it collected 25 barrels of thick crude oil from the broken well on friday. it sounds like a big number but could be less than half of what is spewing from the sea floor on a daily basis and the containment will stop completely, as you said, if tropical storm alex changes course, the storm is gaining quickly and winds topping 60 miles per hour and is moving faster over mexico and could become a hurricane over the warm gulf waters by early next week. now, the coast guard says it will stop drilling those two relief wells, and stop the containment and cleanup efforts, out of the spill site, five days before high winds are expected to arrive, at that site, if high winds arrive they have to secure all the equipment and move all the workers to safety, and the coast guard says it hopes that it will not be necessary. hopefully, not. but we re ready to respond, if
reposition a relief cap next wednesday. rick leventhal is live from louisiana. with officials watching alex very closely, what happens at the spill site if the storm, indeed, heads their way? any work would have to be suspended for up to two weeks at the spill site, including the two relief relief wells. it includes the cleanup on the shores and on the surface of the water and the containment of the spill, that would all stop. five days before gale force winds should arrive so they can evacuate personnel. it would take several days to bring all that stuff in and set it up again. it certainly bad news for the containment of the spill, if in fact this storm should take a turn. coastguard keeping a close eye on it. earlier today we heard from the lieutenant commander who is in charge of the louisiana operations. here is what had he said.
bp s managing director. he used to work for bp in russia and was forced to into working from a series of secret locations. oil is pouring not gulf, up to 60,000-barrels a day. we have mike tobin on efforts to burn off the oil. steve harrigan in louisiana with the latest. kevin costner is supposed to give a conference on the oil centrifuge he s financing. we expect to see kevin costner in a few minutes with the coo of bp. you can see these three are about to go out to the spill site. they re devices this spin oiled water, separating the oil from the water itself and they do 200 gallons a minute. it s something costner worked on more than a decade, he hired a
caps is how one coast guard technician describes the oiled waves that are churning around from alex s outer bands today. the spill site is not taking a direct hurricane hit. but coast guard admiral thad allen says rough waters have forced many oil-skimming boats to dock. the big focus of our operations right now would be on water skimming, trying to deal with the oil as far offshore as we can. we re being inhibited right now by the weather. it takes a certain amount of threshold of not calmness, but you can t get more than about three to five feet, then you start having not very good results in skimming, especially offshore and especially with the size of boom that you have and so forth. coming up at this hour, we ll have more on how the hurricane will impact the spill. renowned physicist talks about what it could mean for that oil-stained region. elena kagan will be confirmed as the next supreme court nominee. that s the word from senator patrick leahy, chairman of the senate ju