are part of one of the extremist groups in a power struggle there, but on friday at a prayer in a local mosque in somalia, one of the commanders actually called for attacks in uganda. then you see this thing happen. al-shabab is one of the groups struggling over power in somalia. they are upset about them being dispatched to the country to stabilize the government there. meanwhile, bp is working to put a new better fitting containment cap on the broken oil well. the company is saying they are optimistic about the operation. and thad allen says it could be in place later today. they are also hoping to have the helix producer, the vessel in place, syphoning oil by tonight. it could collect just under a million gallons of oil i m told. earlier we talked to thad allen, and he said this is what could happen once the new containment
them also americans. it is now day 84 of bp s oil disaster in the gulf. a third day of an operation designed to replace the cap on the broken well. here s a live look right now, 5,000 feet under water. this is where those robotic arms have been working on this very, very difficult operation. bp says the new cap will have a tighter seal and that could mean that oil would stop flowing all together as the company continues to drill the two relief wells. but until the new cap is in place, crude oil is flowing freely. ed lavendera is tracking it all for us live from new orleans this morning. this all started at least the beginning phases of this on saturday. do we have any idea just how much oil when they say unabated is actually flowing into the gulf? reporter: no, really all we have to go by right now, kiran, is that figure that federal team had put together which estimates
and working. the hope is that will finally put an end to this 84-day-old crisis. we re joined by national incident commander admiral thad allen. thanks so much for being with us this morning. good morning, kiran. the idea is to get an all-encompassing seal, a tighter seal on this leak and then draw up as we were hearing from bp officials, perhaps all of the oil. explain this operation and how it is going so far. well, we re going to be in a position later on today to put a containment cap over the well. this containment cap will have the ability to actually close down valves and slowly contain all the oil. once we do that we ll know how much pressure is actually in the well. that could lead to one of two positive outcomes. it could tell us the well is withholding the pressure and we can actually shut the well in or just cap it, if you will. if there is a need that we could produce oil and have enough platforms up on the surface
where we can contain all the oil and produce it, those are two pretty good outcomes either way. i ve asked bp for plans on how to do an integrity test and hopefully decide to move on that later today. commander, you actually urged bp to do what they are doing right now quicker than they were planning to do because you had a weather window that was opportune for this moment? looking at the weather patterns, we saw that there was a real long distance between troughs that were forming out in the atlantic and down in the caribbean. i consulted personally with the administrator of noaa and we felt that there was a seven to ten-day window and if we had the opportunity to do it, we knew that bp had the technology ready to deploy so i asked them for plan and time line on how they might move that forward. they provided me one and ai proved it. you say the that later today you should be moving forward with the tighter cap, that full operation that s taking place.
boat with us and he says he used to enter the water in a normal dive suit but last time he went diving a couple weeks ago he saw a chemical cloud under the water and wasn t going to take any chances anymore. so he says because he doesn t have hazmat training, now he can t enter the water to do his research on corals and fish to see what type of effect this oil crude dispersant mixture is having on the gulf. kiran, drew? if you guys have to suit up to that extent to get in the water, did felipe cousteau give you any indication of what he thinks, what effect that is having on the marine life out there obviously without suits on? reporter: yeah, well that s a really good point, kiran. because felipe and i felt very lucky to be under there. you almost felt a little guilty wearing such a protective suit when you d see we saw sharks swimming around us, they didn t have anything to protect them and other fish. i think that s what bothers felipe the most, is that there is dispersed oil h