BP to try well kill Tuesday

BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) - BP Plc said on Friday it could seal its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well by next week as the House of Representatives voted to toughen regulation of offshore energy drilling.

Incoming BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said the British energy giant would attempt a "static kill" operation on Tuesday to try to plug the blown-out deep-sea well that caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

"We want to absolutely kill this well. The static kill will be attempted on Tuesday. The relief well by the end of the month (August)," said Dudley, BP's top executive on the Gulf oil spill who will replace Tony Hayward as CEO on October 1.

As BP moved ahead with its plans, U.S. government scientists said South Florida, the Florida Keys and the U.S. East Coast likely will be spared from oil pollution from the spill despite earlier dire warnings.

By a vote of 209-193, the House passed tough reforms to offshore drilling practices in response to the BP spill, which caused an economic and environmental disaster along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The legislation would end President Barack Obama's moratorium on deepwater drilling for oil companies that meet new federal safety requirements. The current moratorium runs through the end of November.

The measure has a long way to go before becoming law. The Senate has not yet acted on its version of the legislation.

Obama's fellow Democrats in the House rejected Republican warnings that the bill would slash U.S. oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, a major supplier of domestic energy, and cut high-paying drilling jobs.

The "static kill" will involve pumping drilling mud and cement into the well from the top, while the relief well is expected to be a permanent solution.

The U.S. official overseeing the spill response, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, had said on Thursday he hoped the static kill could be performed as early this weekend.

But at a briefing on Friday Allen said the procedure would be delayed until Tuesday to clean out debris and sediment found in the relief well, which has bored deep into the earth and is intended to plug the leak from the bottom.

Once cleaned out, BP can finish cementing the pipe into the relief well and move forward with a static kill, Allen said.

The ruptured BP well has been temporarily sealed for two weeks, and U.S. officials are cautiously optimistic the spilled oil is dissipating.

In his first news conference on the Gulf since being named to replace the much-criticized Hayward, Dudley stressed the British company's commitment to restoring the coast.

"We are scaling back the number of vessels offshore but we are not stopping cleanup operations by any means," he said. "We are not complacent about this at all."

Millions of gallons (liters) of oil have poured into the Gulf since April, when a rig exploded and sank, killing 11 workers and triggering the leak from the BP-owned well.

The spill has devastated the livelihoods of fishermen and other business owners along the Gulf Coast and presented a challenge to BP and to Obama.

HOUSE PASSAGE

The legislation passed by the House would eliminate the current $75 million liability cap for offshore operations. It also would prohibit oil companies with poor safety records from bidding for new offshore drilling leases, effectively barring BP from starting new U.S. offshore operations.

The measure would impose tighter requirements for well design and well cementing for offshore projects and on equipment known as blowout preventers intended to prevent well ruptures like the one that occurred at BP's well in April.

The Senate is considering a similar bill, but senators are unlikely to pass it before their summer recess on August 6. If the Senate passes a bill, the two chambers would have to resolve any differences between their versions and pass a compromise one before Obama could sign it into law.

Democrats said the bill would make offshore drilling safer for workers and protect the environment from future spills.

"If you want to apologize for Big Oil, go right ahead, but the American people are not on your side on this one," Democratic Representative Jim McGovern told his Republican colleagues.

Scientists had issued dire warnings that the oil from the spill would float into the loop current in the Gulf of Mexico and then ride the powerful Gulf Stream current around the fragile islands at the southern tip of Florida and up the Atlantic Coast as far as North Carolina.

But the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that was now unlikely.

No new oil has leaked from the well in 15 days and the oil that remains in the Gulf is hundreds of miles (km) from the loop current. That oil is in the process of breaking down and will not travel far, NOAA said.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Tom Doggett in Washington, Matthew Bigg in Atlanta and Kristen Hays in Houston; Writing by Deborah Charles; Editing by Will Dunham)