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One year after the Gulf oil spill: A widow learns to adjust to life without her husband. A charter fisherman feels the effect of canceled trips. A well worker considers quitting, but the paycheck proves too enticing. Nearly one year after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up, killing 11 people and starting the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, life goes on with many adjustments in the Gulf of Mexico. Read more about the BP oil spill aftermath.

Outgoing chief executive Tony Hayward says less risk than in Gulf of Mexico, as Shetlands work is expected to start next year

BP’s plans for deepwater drilling in the North Sea have caused concern. An oil-soaked bird struggles against a supply ship in the Gulf of Mexico. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

BP is determined to press ahead with plans to drill deepwater wells west of the Shetlands despite criticism of its “outrageous” attitude to the risks of drilling in the US and worries about its North Sea safety record.

The company is still in talks with the government and privately recognises the Deepwater Horizon disaster makes it a highly sensitive issue but said it would probably start work next year.

The optimism about its chances of drilling the North Uist prospect at water depths of 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) – similar to that in the Gulf of Mexico – was spelled out as BP came under attack today from MPs on the Commons energy and climate change committee.

Tony Hayward, the company’s outgoing chief executive, told the committee investigating the implications of the Gulf oil spill that no definite decision had been taken on whether to proceed west of the Shetlands but he that argued drilling risks were different from the Gulf because reservoir pressures were much lower.

An oil spill response team was already being assembled in Southampton, he said, so BP could in future react much quicker than it had with the rogue Macondo well, which killed 11 rig workers and despoiled the beaches of the southern states of the US.

Bernard Looney, managing director of BP North Sea, said the company had not yet chosen a rig to drill North Uist this year but “we will most likely drill there next year”.

The plans for the Shetlands triggered an angry response from Albert Owen, a Labour member of the committee, who said the Deepwater disaster raised concerns that BP seemed unable to comprehend.

“Do you not understand the frustration and anger, not just of American senators and congressmen but of people who care about the environment, that this is allowed to happen,” said Owen. “Surely there should have been some thought that an accident would happen at this depth … I find the whole thing outrageous.”

Hayward insisted he understood why people felt the way they did and accepted the inability of BP to intervene, because it was not properly prepared, was “unacceptable”. He added: “The industry was not prepared because it believed it had mitigated the risk … And that clearly was a very bad assumption.”

Tim Yeo, the chairman of the committee, said he was alarmed at new revelations that inspections of BP’s North Sea installations by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) found some did not comply with guidelines over regular training for operators on how to respond to an incident.

The energy group was also accused by the HSE of failing to conduct oil spill exercises properly while the Gulf blowout sat uneasily with BP chief executive Tony Hayward’s early promise to focus with “laser-like” intensity on safety.

The BP boss, who stands down at the end of this month, denied the irregularities raised by the HSE amounted to the most serious failings. “I do not believe that the issues that were reported this morning point to any fundamental weakness in our North Sea operations. We have a very strong track record in the North Sea. It is better than the industry average.”

Hayward argued that the company had seen “major improvements” in the course of the last two years. “BP spills, which are a good indicator of safety performance in terms of integrity of plant, have fallen by 20% over the last two years and we now lead the industry in terms of that particular metric in the North Sea.”

The BP chief executive also crossed swords at the hearing with committee member and Conservative MP, Philip Lee, who expressed alarm at the use of chemical dispersants in the Gulf. Hayward admitted: “No one knows the environmental impact of this,” leading Lee to point out that as a medical doctor he would never have injected a patient with a drug unless “I know what it will do.”

BP’s next chief executive tells City analysts compensation claims will probably fall below the $20bn set aside

Deepwater Horizon oil spill compensation should cost BP less than $20bn, says Bob Dudley. Photograph: Nasa

BP‘s incoming chief executive, Bob Dudley, has reassured the City that the company will probably end up paying out less than the committed $20bn in compensation for those affected by the Gulf oil spill.

The White House ordered the company to pay $20bn into a compensation fund over three and a half years, making it clear that further payments may be required.

Although BP still does not know how much it will have to contribute, Dudley’s comments that the $20bn already pledged should cover these claims reflect BP’s growing confidence that it can emerge from April’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in a relatively strong position.

It is understood the company also informed City analysts at a meeting in London on Friday that a facility allowing any unpaid amounts from the fund to be paid back to BP has now been set up.

Analysts even believe BP will soon be able to resume paying dividends, with Citigroup predicting it could do so as early as February, when it reports its full-year results.

Dudley, who formally takes over from Tony Hayward on 1 October, stressed that the decision to suspend the dividend in June was for liquidity reasons, to conserve cash to pay for the spill costs.

Since then, BP has raised about $10bn from asset sales and its costs from the clean-up operation are tailing off because oil has stopped flowing from the stricken well. Because the size of the spill has stopped growing and has been measured, the extent of BP’s potential liabilities have also become clearer.

Dudley also told analysts the estimate BP made in July of $32.2bn for its total liabilities from the spill – officially the biggest in US history – remained reasonable. This assumes BP is not found to have been grossly negligent, in which case its liabilities would soar.

BP has privately been confident for some time that the compensation fund – now being run by White House appointee Ken Feinberg – would not pay out anywhere near $20bn. About $500m in claims have been paid out in just under five months and the claims process will remain open for three years. It is thought Dudley has been in regular contact with Feinberg.

But Dudley did acknowledge the ongoing risks in the aftermath of the disaster when he said one of BP’s priorities was to retain its licence to operate in the US. BP makes more than a third of its total revenue from producing oil and gas from its operations in the Gulf of Mexico and onshore in the US, and some politicians have called for the company to be banned from operating there. One analyst at the meeting told the Guardian: “He was upbeat. I wouldn’t say he was optimistic but he was definitely confident about BP’s position and seemed more comfortable.”

This week retired coastguard Admiral Thad Allen, who is handling the BP oil spill crisis on behalf of the US government, is expected to explain in more detail how the level of pollution in the Gulf will be measured, which will go a long way to determining the amount of reparations BP must pay. BP has hired scientists as subcontractors to work alongside federal agencies and universities to take samples, which has led some to question whether the company could seek to influence the results. A spokesman said there was nothing untoward about assisting the effort.

Jackie Savitz, a marine biologist from campaign group Oceana, said some scientists were concerned about BP being able to influence the process, although no evidence has emerged that this has taken place.

“There is no question that BP would be less committed than the government to showing the full impact and degradation caused to the environment since the company will be on the hook for the damages. The question is whether the government will allow BP to influence its analysis.

“The scientists I have spoken to are aware of the possibility that BP could try to influence the process, and that there can be other pitfalls from the company participating. For example, with BP constantly looking over their shoulders when they collect data, they have to do it 100% right otherwise BP could challenge it in court later.”

Habitat loss could cause a dramatic fall in dwarf seahorse populations, warn conservationists

A dwarf seahorse, found only in waters off the Gulf Coast. The species is at risk because of habitat loss, say conservationists. Photograph: Robert F. Sisson/NG/Getty Images

One of the world’s smallest seahorses faces extinction because of the BP oil spill, conservationists have warned.

The minute creatures, barely 2cm tall, were elusive even before the spill, found only among the seagrass in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Now conservationists from the Zoological Society of London’s Project Seahorse team are warning populations could fall precipitously because so much of their habitat could have been lost to the spill.

“We have very high levels of concern for this particular species because they have a narrower range,” said Heather Masonjones, a seahorse biologist at the University of Tampa.

Although most seahorses are believed to live in shallow water, some also cling to the seagrass mats that float in the open water. During the three months that oil was gushing from BP’s well, these mats become collection points for crude. Some of these were set alight in burn fields as BP tried to stop the oil washing on shore. Furthermore, thick clouds of oil in water typically starve seagrass of the light they need to survive, while toxic components of the oil as well as the millions of gallons of chemical dispersants used to break down the spill could also be shrinking suitable habitat for seahorses.

The dwarf seahorses, or Hippocampus zosterae, are particularly ill-suited to escape. They are poor swimmers, making the species extremely vulnerable to a sudden environmental impact such as the BP spill, said Heather Koldewey, the associate director of Project Seahorse. They also mate for life, and produce relatively few offspring, making it more difficult for them to recover from a cataclysmic event.

Masonjones said the experience of earlier oil spills suggested it could take five years for seagrass to make a complete recovery, which represents about three generations of seahorses. It is also unclear how dispersants, which can be hormone disrupters, will affect reproduction cycles, especially on seahorses where males carry the eggs.

Koldewey said it was crucial that BP take steps to help protect the seagrass in the oil spill clean-up in the months ahead to avoid further damage to seahorse populations: “We are urging BP to continue to use booms in the clean-up to isolate the oil slicks. These can be skimmed, left to evaporate, or treated with biological agents like fertilisers, which promote the growth of micro-organisms that biodegrade oil.”

Head of Transocean, which operated destroyed Deepwater Horizon oil rig, to be asked about safety and deepwater drilling

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Louisiana. Photograph: Jae C. Hong/AP

British politicians will challenge the UK head of Transocean, the operator of the destroyed Deepwater Horizon rig, tomorrow over whether the Gulf of Mexico disaster could be repeated in the North Sea.

In the first televised hearing of an investigation by MPs into what lessons can be learnt from the disaster, Paul King, Transocean’s managing director, and other oil industry executives will be questioned about the North Sea safety regime, particularly for deepwater drilling.

Transocean has a sizeable presence in the North Sea, with more rigs operating than in the Gulf, although they are mostly at shallower depths.

Led by committee chairman Tim Yeo, a former Conservative environment minister, the MPs will ask how many rigs operate with only one set of “blind shear rams” inside their blowout preventer, the last line of defence against a major spill.

The Deepwater Horizon’s single pair of shear rams, which are supposed to cut through the pipe to close off the well in the event of a blow-out, failed to activate.

Transocean’s new rigs are built so that they can accommodate two sets of blind shear rams, which make such a catastrophic failure less likely. But UK regulations do not require operators to use blowout preventers with two pairs of blind shear rams. A spokesman for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said yesterday that the rules were “goal-setting and not prescriptive”.

In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster US politicians have called for the use of double rams to be obligatory.

Members of the House of Commons energy and climate change committee will also ask whether undersea robots would be able to remotely activate a blowout preventer in the event that it failed to shut down a blown well.

BP tried repeatedly to do this in the Gulf without success, leading to the worst oil spill in US history.

Transocean’s record has come under closer scrutiny following a report by the HSE, revealed in the Guardian this week, which said that the company’s organisational culture was based on blame and intolerance. It also said instances of unacceptable behaviour by offshore management were raised with HSE inspectors by Transocean staff on more than one North Sea rig visited. These included bullying, aggression, harassment, humiliation and intimidation, and were “causing some individuals to exhibit symptoms of work-related stress, with potential safety implications”, the HSE said.

Malcolm Webb, chief executive of trade body Oil & Gas UK, as well as the head of a new oil response industry body, will also be questioned. Webb is expected to mount a robust defence of the North Sea safety regime and reject calls for the UK to issue a moratorium on new drilling, as the US has done, until the causes of the Gulf disaster are known.

The British government recently closed bidding for the 26th licensing round to drill in new areas of the North Sea, which was one of the most hotly contested for some time. The round includes new blocks for the west of Shetland, one of the last frontiers of the North Sea which contains more than a fifth of Britain’s remaining oil and gas reserves, most of it in deepwater and rough seas. BP is one of the companies thought to be keen to start drilling in unexplored waters.

Webb will also reject suggestions – first made by Europe’s energy commissioner in July – for offshore drilling to be governed by European-wide, rather than national, legislation. The committee will also raise concerns that the moratorium in the US and Norway could result in more deepwater activity in the UK.

Charles Hendry, the UK energy minister, will appear before the committee at a later hearing. He has insisted that the existing North Sea safety regime is adequate, following a brief review immediately after the Gulf disaster. One improvement already announced is a plan to increase the number of government inspectors for the 300 rigs and platforms in the UK North Sea from six to nine.

Counsellors and lawyers are busier than seafarers in Louisiana, as some experts warn that fishing industry will never recover

An oyster boat sails past anchored fishing vessels on a waterway in Yscloskey, Louisiana. Fishermen fear that the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will cause longterm harm to their industry. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

High tide, and the remains of a late summer storm, and it is hard to tell on this strip of land between the Mississippi and the marsh where land ends and water begins. It was here – in the most southerly reaches ofLouisiana on terrain that is slowly sliding into the sea – that oil from BP’s Macondo well first started coming ashore, about a week after the 20 April explosion on the Deepwater Horizon. Eleven men were killed when the drilling platform blew up.

And it is here where local people will take the most convincing that the worst of the oil spill is behind them and that recovery is under way.

Barack Obama’s point man on the spill, the US Coast Guard’s former commander, Thad Allen, said at the weekend that the well no longer posed any threat to the Gulf. Crews will begin the last few remaining operations needed to abandon the well this week.

People here live and die by the water. On a fine day the docks in Venice empty out, with seaworthy boats and able-bodied crew off to look for oil contamination, at sea and in the marsh grass.

No one, it seems, believes the assurances from the White House or government scientists that the oil is largely gone. And no one really believes BP when oil company executives say they will stay in Louisiana for the long haul.

They have seen one exodus already, just before Tropical Storm Bonnie blew through, about a week after the well was capped in mid-July. BP evacuated work crews and boats; many have not returned.

“Oh, the oil’s out there,” said a captain of one of the air boats chewing through the marsh. When the water is clear the oil pops out like a giant black teardrop. He said the air boats were carrying away up to 3,000 white plastic trash bags of oiled sand from a nearby section of marsh each day. “We’ll be here for at least a year – if they still want us, that is.”

The autumn shrimping season opened on schedule on 16 August and the authorities have steadily been opening up more of the Gulf forfishing. About 83% of US waters in the Gulf are now open for fishing. The first tests on shrimp, swordfish and tuna hauled out of the Gulf showed no traces of oil.

But Acy Cooper, who wears a shrimpers’ white rubber boots even on days when he is not fishing, is possessed by a powerful sense of dread. How can we know for sure that the shrimp is safe from crude or its toxic components? He has seen oil in certain shrimping areas.

“We are only going to get one shot at this. If we don’t do it right, we are going to be in big trouble if any tainted shrimp gets on the market,” he said. “We don’t want to get anything on the market that is going to kill us in the long run.”

Not even the most stringent testing can ensure that fishermen stay out of oiled waters – not when some fishermen have been out of work since late April. “Some people are so hungry they are going to do what they can to survive,” Cooper said.

Already the local economy is being transformed. On noticeboards, cards for mental health services and lawyers offering to sue BP are tacked on top of advertisements for fishing guides. It is getting harder to find a market for fish.

The other day George Barisich, the head of the United Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, had to drive all the way into Mississippi before he could find a processor who wanted his shrimp. He said he was reduced to selling for just $1.40 (90p) per pound.

Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency have been on local radio shows, such as Talk of the Bayou, trying to persuade fishermen like Cooper they have nothing to fear.

“So far we haven’t seen a bit of evidence the oil is getting real deep in the marsh,” said Jacqueline Michel, a NOAA biochemist.

Only 22 of the 2,000 water samples taken from the Gulf contained traces of oil, and none has permeated deep into the wetlands, which are breeding grounds for shrimp.

The callers were not buying it, and neither was Cooper. He worries that the last few months may have ruined the fisherman’s life for some.

Although local people complain that BP gave too many jobs to outsiders rather than locals for cleanup work, some taken on have become used to earning good money – even when they were waiting around at the marina – on the oil company’s “vessels of opportunity” programme for the cleanup.

Cooper is worried they may give up on shrimping, now that it’s such an uncertain occupation.

“We are on the verge of losing this industry,” he said. “The chain is broken with the vessels of opportunity.”

For Al Sunseri that chain stretches back to 1876 when his family set up the P&J Oyster Company on the edges of New Orleans’ French quarter.

He still turns up for work at 4.30am, but there are no workers shucking oysters on the loading dock. Eleven people have been let go.

Premium oysters are a vanishing commodity. Those oysters not killed by the oil were finished off by the Louisiana government’s decision to flood the Gulf with fresh water to try to keep the oil offshore.

Sunseri now occupies his time taking orders on a clipboard, trying to mollify the desperate chefs who are his main customer base. He is running dangerously low on shucked oysters.

He asks callers if they could get by with a smaller order. “I am just going to have to tell people I don’t have them and that is not something that I am used to doing,” he said.

The shortage has pushed the price of oysters in the shell up 40% since the spill. That is too rich in the depths of a recession – even for a luxury product. Sunseri also worries that what oysters he can find are of variable quality.

“I know they say about 40% of the oyster growing area is open but as far as productive areas, it is maybe about 15%,” he said. “We don’t have babies, and we don’t have the market-sized ones.”

He moves over to a tabletop display of oyster shells. Those that are being harvested are about half normal size. “These would ordinarily not be harvested for another year,” he said.

“They really should be in there developing. The few little oysters that I am selling right now are really inferior.”

Even industry cheerleader Mike Voisin, who chairs the Louisiana Oyster Task Force, admits it will be three years before the oyster beds resettle. Until then, he says, the harvest will probably fall to half of the usual 113,000 tonne annual take.

The timespan is depressing for Sunseri. He said he is telling his children: “Your daddy does not care if this business fizzles away. Don’t feel the burden of carrying this on.”

For Ryan Lambert, who once counted himself the biggest fishing charter operator around Venice, such acceptance is unthinkable. He is much too angry to be resigned.

The spill left him with a calendar showing week after week of cancelled bookings, gutting a business that once brought in $1.3m a year.

By BP’s reckoning though, his losses were just $66,000. Lambert is furious. He said he has paid his accountant hundreds of dollars to meet BP’s demands for documentation. “I shouldn’t have to fight for the money that is owed me,” he said. “I am not the bad guy here. They are the ones who ruined it for me, not vice versa. For me to have to fight for them to pay me for what they did makes me sick.”

He is also worried sick that the fish will start disappearing, as they did in the years after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, and that his business will be dealt a slow, painful death.

He built his company from scratch, starting from his love of bass fishing; now his clients troop into his fishing lodge from all across the country. He rebuilt once before, after Hurricane Katrina. He is not sure he can do it again, or wait for the Gulf to make a full recovery.

“I am 52 years old. I can’t wait 20 years for them to clean things up.”

He feels certain BP will pull out much sooner. “The well will be stopped, and then they will hang around until the oil stops coming up on the beaches, and then they will be gone,” he said.

“Anything they don’t clean will be left to me and the microbes and Mother Nature until all of a sudden we won’t be America’s best fishery any more.

“This will be history some day, and I will still have that problem.”

Voices on the ground

‘On television they are saying all the time that there is no oil. What BP did is that they succeeded in buying off the White House and Congress and most of the senators, and now they are buying off the networks’

Dean Blanchard, shrimp magnate

‘The oil is still very in the coastal areas, it’s still coming up along the beaches, and it’s in the bottom offshore as well as in the bays and estuaries. A lot needs to be addressed before BP says it has all been attended to’

Wilma Subra, chemist

‘The only silver lining that is going to come out of this is that the goverment and the country are going to understand the importance of the Gulf’

George Barisich, president, United Commercial Fishermen’s Association

‘Ironically, this catastrophe may in the end run have more impact on oil leasing programmes than on the Gulf of Mexico … We recognise now that we have something much more like a nuclear reactor on our hands than a wood-burning stove and that is an awreness that is new to the federal government, new ot the public, and new to Congress’

Oliver Houck, environmental law professor at Tulane University

What executives are labelling ‘Future BP’ will be a much smaller company shorn of much of its presence around the world

A sign at a BP petrol station is reflected in raindrops. Photograph: Reuters

BP is still standing, but the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has changed the company forever. It could have been far worse.

In June, some City analysts doubted whether BP could survive the crisis. Shares had plunged by more than half. Within the space of a few weeks, the official estimate of the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf had increased from 5,000 barrels to anywhere between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. The company’s repeated attempts to stop the flow had failed and August – the earliest the first relief well could be drilled – seemed a lifetime away.

The chief executive, Tony Hayward – who has since resigned – and BP’s chairman were summoned to meet Barack Obama at the White House. They were forced to scrap plans to pay shareholders a dividend and instead to set aside $20bn to pay damages to those affected.

While the battle to stop the leak is over, the legal battle is only just beginning. BP will fight tooth and nail against accusations that it was grossly negligent. If the charge stands, it faces fines of up to $21bn. BP wouldn’t be able to pass off other costs, such as the clean-up and damages, to its partners. With investigations by the Department of Justice, among others, only just beginning, US lawyers say it will take years to decide who was to blame for the accident – and the full level of BP’s liabilities.

The company is already selling $30bn worth of assets to meet its costs from the spill so far. What executives are labelling “Future BP” will be a much smaller company shorn of much of its presence around the world. If investigations decide it has been grossly negligent, many more asset sales will be necessary.

BP argues that whatever happens, it is in the US’s interests that it survives so it can meet all its liabilities. But it may be some time before it can afford to resume paying bumper dividends, which normally make up more than one-tenth of all payouts by UK companies.

photo by Socialistisk Ungdom – SU (Flickr CC)

he massive leak in the Gulf of Mexico may have been stopped, but oil still continues to spread and flow. Scientists, local communities and businesses wait for the true toll of damage to be revealed as the rest of the world turns its attentions elsewhere.

Environmentalists desperately try to prevent the fossil fuel industry from destroying another pristine environment in the icy Arctic, but the thirst for oil is strong and the geopolitics surrounding it complex.

Yet there is another place where a devastating spill is continually taking place, poisoning lush ecosystems while destroying livelihoods and lives.

In Nigeria’s Niger River delta, oil companies like Shell, Chevron and Agip pollute heavily and on a daily basis, a tragedy compounded by a lack or rule of law in the region, criminality and militant activity. A recent and ongoing United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report has identified more than 300 oil spills in the Ogoniland region of the delta.

From an article in the Guardian:

[We] observed the oil slick floating on the lake. Destroyed fishing nets were also noticed in the polluted environment. The community is faced with incessant oil spills.

–Alagoa Morris, Friends of the Earth Nigeria

According to another report in the Guardian, a three-year UN investigation places 90% of the blame for the spills on criminal gangs, with the remaining 10% attributed to ‘equipment failures and company negligence’ on the part of Shell. For some, this news is understandably not so easy to swallow:

Tonight the investigation was accused of bias by Nigerians and environmental groups who said the study – paid for by Shell and commissioned by the Nigerian government, who both have massive oil interests in the region – was unbalanced.

To be fair to Shell and Nigeria, who else but the polluter(s) should pay for the study? The criminal gangs or militias who share the blame certainly won’t. Yet, in stark contrast to the UNEP’s findings, an Amnesty International report from last year – while acknowledging criminal contribution to the problem – placed the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of Shell.

Of course, there are sociopolitical forces relating to the oil industry and pollution in Ogoniland that are not cut and dry. The unequal distribution of wealth as well as the health and security of the Ogonis are the responsibility of the Nigerian government and plainly not the concern of Shell and other oil companies operating in the region, who take full advantage of the political and socioeconomic situation in Nigeria. Pollution and poverty are acceptable blowback, as long as long as it’s criminals who take the blame.

What is incontrovertible about the UN survey is the value of the amount information it is finding concerning the extent of contamination in the Niger delta. This data will at least be invaluable for future cleanup efforts

Scientists confirm the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which released 5m barrels of oil, was the worst accidental spill ever as preparations are finalised to seal the ruptured well

Rigs drilling a relief well and preparing the static kill are seen at the site of the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico

Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

BP hopes to carry out a crucial test later today in final preparation for sealing the ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico, which scientists agreed last night has been responsible for the worst accidental oil spill in history.

Nearly 5m barrels of oil have gushed into the ocean since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in April, according to federal scientists. That makes the spill larger than the 3.3m barrels released into Mexico’s Bay of Campeche when the Ixtoc I oil rig suffered a catastrophic blowout in 1979.

At its peak, the BP well was spewing 62,000 barrels a day, according to the federal team, which is higher than the original worst-case scenario of 60,000. But by the time that BP was able to cap the well last month that figure had dropped to 53,000 a day.

The new estimate of the size of the spill – of a total of 4.9m barrels – means the potential penalty that BP faces under US law has ballooned. Under the Clean Water Act, BP faces a fine of $1,100 (£691) a barrel, or $4,300 a barrel if it is found that the spill was the result of gross negligence. As a result, BP could be fined either $5.4bn or $21bn. The federal team reckon BP’s own containment efforts saved about 800,000 barrels which could be taken into account as a mitigating factor, reducing the fine to either $4.5bn or $17.6bn.

The largest oil spill in history came at the end of the first Gulf war in 1991 when retreating Iraqi forces destroyed countless Kuwaiti wells, which resulted in an estimated 1.4m to 1.5m tonnes of oil being released into the Persian Gulf. That spill is not, of course, counted as accidental.

In an attempt to finally close the Macondo well, BP engineers will today carry out a pressure test to see whether they can begin the so-called‘static kill’ procedure, which involves pumping heavy drilling mud into the well.

If tests go to plan, BP will begin pumping mud into the well from a nearby ship loaded with 8,000 barrels of it. The plan is to slowly force the oil back down into the reservoir by steadily pumping in the heavier mud. If successful, BP will be able to either cement the well from the top, or wait until the relief wells – which are due to be completed later this month – have reached the correct depth and cement the well from the bottom.

Preparations for the “injectivity” test – which was delayed on Monday because of a small leak of hydraulic fluid in a control panel – come as it emerged BP has sent a bill for $480m to one of its partners in the well.

Japan’s Mitsui, which has a 10% stake in the well through its unit Mitsui Oil Exploration, said overnight that it has received a bill for $480m from BP which it will “carefully” study but has yet to decide if it will pay any clean-up costs.

Last month it emerged that BP was looking to recoup some of the costs of the clean-up from Mitsui and Canada’s Anadarko Petroleum, which has a 25% share in the well.

Anadarko has flatly refused to accept any blame for the disaster. In June its chairman and chief executive, Jim Hackett, said BP’s actions probably amounted to “gross negligence or wilful misconduct”.

Last month, BP announced that it had set aside $32.2bn to pay for the spill as embattled chief executive Tony Hayward announced plans to quit his job.

BP engineers are preparing to pump heavy drilling mud and cement into the well in a procedure known as ‘static kill’

US official overseeing the federal spill response, Thad Allen, said ‘static kill’ would begin Monday night or Tuesday morning.

Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

BP will know within hours on Tuesday whether its attempt to plug the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico has worked.

Company engineers are preparing to pump heavy drilling mud and cement into the well in a procedure known as “static kill”.

Retired coast guard admiral Thad Allen, the US official overseeing the federal spill response, said that the operation would begin either Monday night or early Tuesday morning.

A week later, mud and cement will be pumped in from below, via a relief well that has been dug deep into the earth, to seal the leak permanently.

Oil has stopped gushing from the well for the past two weeks after a temporary cap was placed on top of it. BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank on 20 April, causing what is thought to be the US’s worst environmental disaster in history