British Petroleum had to scuttle yesterday’s test of the Static kill injectivity test until Tuesday, August 3rd when experts found small leakage from the damaged Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. The test is crucial for verify if the static kill procedure is likely to work. The injectivity test includes drilling and flooding of the ruptured well with thousands of barrels of mud to determine if oil can be pushed back into the reservoir from the top of the well.

It has been over 100+ days now since the April 20th explosion of the British Petroleum deep water well off the Louisiana coast that killed 11 people and spewed as much as 184 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico. Some estimates put the spill at the Deepwater Horizon Macondo rig up to 5 million barrels of oil in the largest oil spill ever in American waters. All efforts to date to cap the well and stop the flow of oil have been marked by repeated failures and disappointments.