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BP to try several oil leak options, none certain


    MIAMI (Reuters) - BP will press ahead with a series of short-term options, including one this week, to try to plug its gushing Gulf of Mexico oil well, and these will be attempted before it completes an expected relief well in August, BP Managing Director Bob Dudley said on Sunday.

    "We will keep trying, we will not wait until August," Dudley told CNN's "State of the Union".

    But he added: "There is no certainty at these kind of depths".

    BP engineers would attempt a "top kill" - pumping heavy fluids into the ruptured well to shut it off - in an operation that would begin late Tuesday or early Wednesday, he said.

    Other short-term options included a "junk shot" of pieces of rubber and other materials into the failed blowout preventer over the leaking well.

    Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen told CNN another option was the fitting of a new blowout preventer.

    (Reporting by Pascal Fletcher)