Video: BP under pressure after 'top kill' failures

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2. Transcript of: BP under pressure after 'top kill' failures

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   LESTER HOLT, anchor: Just a short while ago, British Petroleum announced their latest attempt to plug that oil leak beneath the Gulf of Mexico has not worked. For days, crews have been pumping heavy fluids into the leaking well in an operation called top kill. But tonight, despite initial high hopes, those in charge say the tricky gamble has not been enough to stop the flow of oil, and that they will try yet another plan. In the face of an ever-growing environmental catastrophe, failure, of course, is not an option. NBC 's Anne Thompson is just back from an aerial tour of the spill with a top BP official. She joins us now from New Orleans to tell us where they go from here. Anne , good evening.

   ANNE THOMPSON reporting: Good evening, Lester . This is very discouraging news for the Louisiana coastline. This afternoon in a conference call, top BP officials, engineers and top members of the Obama administration assessed the progress of top kill and decided it was time to kill it. After four days of heavy mud and junk shots to try and plug the well 5,000 feet deep, top kill didn't produce the results the world wanted.

   Mr. DOUG SUTTLES: So after three full days of attempting top kill, we have been unable to overcome the flow from the well.

   THOMPSON: What's next ? BP will cut off a piece of the leaking pipe and place a small containment dome on top in another attempt to keep this disaster from getting any worse. Four times a week, Doug Suttles gets a bird's-eye view of BP 's oil spill ...

   Mr. SUTTLES: You can see some sheen here. You see those streaks?

   THOMPSON: ...and the cleanup effort. The bill so far: $940 million and growing, along with the damage. Louisiana 's few beaches are being cleaned, but BP 's chief operating officer concedes the company must do much better in the oil-soaked marshes.

   Mr. SUTTLES: We're putting a lot more of the control, a lot more of the authority and a lot more of the people much closer to where the action is .

   THOMPSON: BP and Suttles are both under attack. He's received death threats, and today BP is being blasted for busing in cleanup workers just for yesterday's presidential visit to Grand Isle .

   Mr. SUTTLES: Of course, that's not to put on a show, that's to actually minimize the impact. So it's frustrating that people say those things.

   THOMPSON: Now 40 days old, some experts say there are faster ways to clean up the spill.

   Mr. JOHN HOFMEISTER (Former Shell Oil President): I think we should be seriously considered some kind of a tank formation with three, four, five supertankers. Get this oil off the surface.

   THOMPSON: Suttles says he's looked at that idea.

   Mr. SUTTLES: If the oil would come up in one spot, that technique would probably be quite effective. But it doesn't come up in one spot, it's over a wide area. So that's why we end up using, you know, at any given time, hundreds of vessels out there to try to capture it.

   THOMPSON: As this drags on, BP 's credibility problems grow. After having vastly underestimated the size of the spill and the almost daily resetting of the top kill timeline this week, many here wonder if BP is telling the truth about anything.

   Mr. SUTTLES: This is not our thing we do. We're not used to having the world focused on what we do, and it's not what we're good at, and I'll admit that.

   THOMPSON: Can you tell me you are telling the truth?

   Mr. SUTTLES: We are. You know, I'm personally involved in every piece of this operation, and I can tell you that we're trying to be as open and as transparent as we -- as we can be.

   THOMPSON: As for the efforts out at sea, Suttles says BP will continue its burning and skimming operations and it will also continue using that controversial dispersant. But Suttle points out, at least from the air, it is using a quarter of the dispersant it once did. Lester :

   HOLT: Anne Thompson tonight, thank you.

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