Ellington

A mile-long pipe running from the sea floor where hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil are gushing into the Gulf of Mexico may be the start of capping the spill, reports The Sun Herald. BP officials called the pipe, which is connected to an oil tanker on the surface of the water, "an important step" but not the solution to the problem.

"We're looking to optimize this over the next couple days to try to produce as much oil and gas as we can," Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president for exploration and production, told reporters. According to the story, Wells said that the amount of oil being captured was "gradually increasing," but the company had not measured how much they were syphoning, yet.

Yesterday, The Times-Picayune reported that the procedure is capturing about 1,000 barrels of oil a day, about 20 percent of the lowest estimate of 210,000 barrels rushing into the water daily. Some experts estimate, however, that the spill is putting closer to 1 million barrels a day into the Gulf.

The complex procedure involves inserting the a 5-foot long tube that is 4 inches in diameter, into the largest of the leaks, which is 21 inches in diameter, and partially sealing it with rubber diaphragms. BP is testing the oil being recovered to see if it can be refined.