is a little bit different, the equipment that you have to deal with is a little bit different, and of course that s why they had to make the transition spool on to the lmrp because that wasn t the typical arrangement that they d be looking for in a blowout and they did that, and then they at the same time were building the equipment to actually do this. and also, the steps that they did earlier, they actually learned from their mistakes in terms of the ice crystals that they had problems with and that sort of thing, they learned how to control that. so a lot of the success that you see right now is a result of the steps that they took before this. so they ve been doing this in a very careful step-wise fashion and i don t know why no one believes that, but it appears that way to me. yeah. well, i guess no one believes that because we ve seen this oil spilling into the gulf for the past 85 days and it is tough to get around those pictures. but will what they re doing now change the oil
gushing out the way it is. since that cap was removed ux, more oil has been gushing out of the well, but they had to get the old cap out of there to move this new one in there. it s 30 feet tall, weighs 80 tons. this has a connector and what s called a flange transition spool that s already connected to the leaking well. that s what s already down there. we re going to show you an animation where you re going to see how they re putting it on. this is the transition spool they ve already put in place. that s an animation of that going in place. then the r.o.v. s kind of sealing it in. then comes the new sealing cap. the three-ram stack. they re bringing it down and that s what s going on right now. they re getting ready to lower that down this evening.
1 american, nate hen, visiting for a few months on the facebook page before he left the usa, he said he was looking forward to working with them and he said he loved the country. several other americans believed to have been wounded in those attacks. chuck, savannah, back to you guys. all right. tom aspell in london this morning, thank you. disturbing. big day in the gulf. a turning point perhaps. work is you should way for a new tighter fitting cap on the leak one that holds the promise of capturing most if not all of the oil gushing into the gulf. nbc chief environmental affairs correspondent anne thompson on duty in venice, louisiana, this morning. give us an update on where things stand on this operation to put thesealing cap and the helix. reporter: first, the sealing cap, savannah. they re about halfway there in the process. something called the transition spool, the first part of this sealing cap is on top of the
pluff theory of the case once democrats believe that they could lose that it will come up but as somebody pointed out, if this is part of the sunday message trying to do, david axelrod would have said the same thing. wasn t an overt piece of their strategy. simply robert answering a question. yeah. still ahead as crews try to bring the nightmare in the gulf to a close, the commission investigating the disaster holds the first public meeting today. coming up, an exclusive interview with the men heading up the commission. after two years of an elaborate game of cat and mouse, cops nab the barefoot bandit. can they make the charges stick? but first, a look ahead at the president s schedule today. kind of a busy one. he has a meeting with an international leader but then, of course, a press briefing. like a regular monday here. in the middle of summer.
this is a larger vessel than some of the other ones we ve seen, and bp has been working all week to get it hooked up. that could be on line today. the second big development we re seeing is the first part of the brand new permanent cap is being lowered sub-sea for placement early to mid-week. so the images we re about to see here, let s just look at this one more time. the old containment cap was removed yesterday, and to replace it, it s going to take a little bit of time today as they put this new cap in place. they have to bolt it down. we re kind of seeing images right here from the robotic cameras. those holes right there, that s where bolts would come down, correct? that s exactly it. so what bp is calling it is a flange transition spool. it s a huge structure. it s 12 feet tall. it weighs more than 12,000 to