By Pascal Fletcher and Anna Driver
Miami/Houston - BP advanced on the final lap toward permanently killing the source of the world's worst offshore oil spill and kicked off a $20-billion compensation fund with a $3-billion deposit on Monday.
A relief well being drilled by BP is on track to start a definitive "bottom kill" shutdown of the crippled Gulf of Mexico well this week, unless an approaching weather system disrupts the timing, the top US oil spill response official said.
Optimism has grown since the biggest US environmental cleanup operation ever launched passed a critical milestone last week by subduing the blown-out deepwater well with injections of heavy drilling mud, followed by a cement seal.
"Thankfully, because of the incredibly hard work by people from all across government, we are are now finally able to say that the well is contained and we can get a permanent kill of that well over the next couple of weeks," President Barack Obama said at a Democratic fundraiser in Austin, Texas.
BP's Macondo well, a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico, was provisionally capped on July 15 after spewing an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, polluting marshlands, fisheries and tourist beaches along several hundreds of kilometres of the Gulf Coast.
Officials say no more oil has leaked from the site since then, but the relief well is regarded as the final solution to plug the well 4 000m beneath the seabed.
"They are closing in on the last 30-40 feet ... We expect that sometime before the end of the week we will be able to commence the kill," US oil response chief retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen told a conference call.
As the deepwater engineering operation progressed, BP said it was also moving to fulfill its public commitments to compensate for economic damage caused by the spill.
It said it had made an initial deposit of $3-billion into a $20-billion escrow fund. - Reuters