BP prepares to plug damaged well

A procedure intended to ease the job of plugging BP's blown-out Gulf of Mexico well for good could start as early as the weekend, the U.S. government's point man for the spill response said Thursday.

The so-called static kill is intended to make the job of plugging the BP well easier and it can begin as soon as crews finish work on the relief well needed for a permanent fix.

Retired U.S. coast guard admiral Thad Allen said crews would drop in the casing for the relief well later Thursday, and that could speed up work on the static kill, though he did not say how much. He previously said it would begin late Sunday or early Monday.

Crews will pump heavy mud down the well through a temporary cap and failed piece of equipment called a blowout preventer. If the well casing is intact, the mud will force the oil back down into the natural petroleum reservoir. Then workers will pump in cement to seal it.

The static kill is on track for completion some time next week. Then comes the bottom kill, where the relief well will be used to pump in mud and cement. That process will take days or weeks, depending on whether the static kill works.

Allen also said he had what he called a very frank and open discussion with coastal community officials concerned that the coast guard and BP will pull back from the spill recovery once the oil is stopped permanently.

"You know these parish presidents, no one held anything back," he said.

He said they'll work together to come up with a plan by next week for how to clean up any oil that might continue washing up on beaches and in wetlands.

The temporary cap has held in the oil for the last two weeks, and Allen said crews are having trouble finding patches of the crude that had been washing up since the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people.

Some surface oil dissipating: reports

No one knows for sure how much of that oil might still be lurking below the surface, but most of what was coming ashore has broken up or been sucked up by skimming boats or burned.

"The oil that we do see is weathered, it is sheen," Allen said.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said as he arrived for the meeting that it's clear the cleanup effort is being scaled back even though oil is still showing up on the coast.

He said his biggest fear is "they are going to start pulling back. They say they are not, but already they have cancelled catering contracts, they've stopped production of boom at factories."

BP hopes to plug the well permanently by mid-August. But Allen said the coast guard expects oil to keep showing up on beaches four to six weeks after that happens.

U.S judicial panel reviews lawsuits

Meanwhile, a federal judicial panel meeting in Idaho is considering where to consolidate more than 300 lawsuits filed over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill against BP and other companies.

Twenty-three attorneys argued Thursday before the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation over where the cases should be centralized for key pretrial rulings. Although it is thousands of kilometres from the Gulf, Boise was the scheduled stop for the roving seven-judge panel.

Gulf Coast residents and businesses are suing for severe economic losses. Many want the lawsuits to be heard in New Orleans, closest to the disaster. Alabama, Mississippi and Florida are also being suggested.

BP and the other companies have suggested Houston as a possible site.