Oil's Well That Doesn't End Well For This Oil Well, Part 8

GIANT CONCRETE BOX THINGY!  He is our hero!

GIANT CONCRETE BOX THINGY!  He will save the Gulf!

...Or not.

A mammoth white containment dome placed over a leaking oil well 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico had to be moved away from the well Saturday after ice-like crystals clogged the massive steel-and-concrete box.

The buildup of crystals also made the box too buoyant, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said.

"I wouldn't say it failed yet," he said. "What I would say is what we attempted to do last night didn't work."
The lowering of the containment device was a slow-moving process. It took about two weeks to build the 40-foot box, and the effort to lower it by crane and cable to the seafloor began late Thursday night. After it hit bottom Friday afternoon, the crane gradually eased off to allow it to settle.

By Saturday, workers had to move the box, which is still on the sea bed, some 200 meters away from the leaking oil well.

To try to contain the spill, engineers hoped to thread a slot in the dome over the well's main leaking pipe, then let the dome sink into the mud, creating a water-tight seal. After that, engineers planned to hook a pipeline to it and pump the oil it collects into a waiting barge.

Officials had warned that many things could go wrong with the effort, which has never been tried at that depth.

"This hasn't been done before and it will undoubtedly have some complications but we are committed to making this work," Suttles said Friday.

Everything's fine here, got an oil leak here, very dangerous, just give us a second to lock it down...how are you?