BP aims to fix leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well by 27 July

BP is working to fix the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico by 27 July, weeks before its publicly stated deadline. The company is due to report second-quarter results that day. It hopes to provide more information on its liabilities from the oil spill to shareholders, as well as its initial findings on the causes of the disaster. BP had previously stated that it hopes to have a fix in place by mid-August. It wants to make progress by 20 July, the day David Cameron is visiting the White House, the Wall Street Journal reported . "In a perfect world with no interruptions, it's possible to be ready to stop the well between 20 July and 27 July," the head of BP's Gulf Coast restoration unit, managing director Bob Dudley, told the Journal. He added that this "perfect case" is threatened by the hurricane season and is "unlikely". BP is drilling two relief wells through which it will pump material designed to seal the blown-out well. Under intense pressure from the US government, the oil giant is preparing a number of backup plans in case its current efforts to contain the massive spill fail. These include connecting the well to pipelines in two nearby underwater gas and oil fields. Later today the oil drilling industry is set to go head-to-head with the Obama administration in court over a moratorium on deep-ocean well drilling in the wake of the worst environmental disaster in US history. The government wants to reinstate the ban after it was overturned by federal judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana on 22 June. Feldman ruled that the federal government's six-month blanket moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico was unjustified because it assumed that all deepwater drilling was as dangerous as BP's.