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.