Plugging the Gulf oil spill: 'top kill' live | Richard Adams | World news | guardian.co.uk
the guardian's started a blog to track the top kill undertaking. these are sometimes pretty good to track, so here's a link.
cimmaron: in a way i think you're right that the underlying problem is the depth---but it's the kind of problem that it is because of the regulatory laxness in part, which resulted in the contingency plans not being in place and because of that technologies required to address the contingencies were not developed. they didn't have to be because this situation was deemed "unlikely". which i suppose it was until it wasn't (there are something like 4000 rigs in the gulf of mexico. these things don't happen every day.)
as for why the barriers dont seem to be doing much, i can't say, but one problem appears to be the dispersants that bp was spraying on the oil out of the leak turned out to not only be toxic and problematic for that reason, but worse they were causing the oil to clump up with the dispersant (somehow---pressure maybe?) which made it heavier than it otherwise would have been---so there was basically an oil slick 1500 feet below the surface. that's one explanation anyway. can't say how complete it is.
btw here's a link to bp's live feed.
Live video link from the ROV monitoring the damaged riser
for some reason as i write this, they've decided its really important to show the damaged riser. i don't get it.