Tyres a Potential Solution to Gulf of Mexico Oil Leak

Tyres may be conscripted into the effort to contain the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles indicates that scrap tyres and golf balls could be inserted into the oil well’s faulty blowout preventer to stop the flow of some 5,000 barrels of oil into the water each day. "We have some pipe work on the blowout preventer, and if we can open certain valves on that we could inject basically just rubber and other type of material into [it] to plug it up, not much different to the way you might plug up a toilet," he said.

In a CBS television interview, Admiral Thad Allen of the US Coast Guard explained  “they’re going to take a bunch of debris, shredded up tyres, golf balls and things like that, and under very high pressure shoot it into the preventer itself and see if they can clog it up and stop the leak.” However our tyres may also quickly turn from being heroes of the day into rubbery villains – other experts have expressed concerns that further damage to the blowout preventer could see the volume of oil escaping from the well increase significantly.