(EFE / 06-08-10)  BP announced on Thursday they have completed cementing operations at the broken well in the Gulf of Mexico, as part of the operation that brings closer the U.S. Government to the goal to put an end to the worst ecological disaster in their history.

The success is the ending of the “statik kill” operation, the most ambitious of the company to stop the spill so far.

However, retired Admiral Thad Allen, who coordinates the response to the spill on behalf the U.S. Government, said in a press conference on Thursday that “this is not the end” of the disaster that has devastated the waters of the Gulf, but “it will virtually assure us that there will be no chance of oil leaking into the environment."

Allen authorized BP to conduct cementing operations on the well on Wednesday, hours after the company announced the success of the first phase of the sailing strategy, which consisted on pumping of 2,300 barrels of heavy drilling mud into the well to push the oil.

The engineers working on sailing the well decided to block it before the works of digging an auxiliary well, considered the ultimate solution to the spill, finished.

The auxiliary well, at 5,500 m depth, will allow closing the bottom of the tank that caused the oil slick through an operation called “bottom kill”, injecting heavy mud and concrete.

4.9 MILLION BARREL OF OIL INTO THE OCEAN

The foundation of the auxiliary well, provided on 15 August by BP, will be the beginning of the real last phase of the operation to seal the well, which has spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean since April, when a rig of the company collapsed and fell over the tank.

74% of the total oil released into the ocean since then has been collected, burnt, evaporated or decomposed by natural processes, according to a scientific report presented by White House energy advisor Carol Browner on Wednesday.

Nevertheless, according to Browner, oil cleanup and “mother nature help” will be crucial in the next months to neutralize the oil remaining in the coasts and that one floating in a residual way as microscopic particles in the ocean.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that the fight to stop the spill “is finally ending” and praised the efforts to slow down the oil slick that has turned upside down the lives of thousands of people.

On the other hand, Allen said on Thursday that the administration “will continue compensating” those affected in the southeastern states of the country and will keep on pressing to BP to take “full responsibility” in the disaster.

It should be noted that the engineers who injected the heavy mud to already have to determine iff there is any leakage outside the main duct, a process that requires complicated measuring of pressure fluctuations in the broken well.

“It seems that the mud we pumped went directly through the pipe” Said Kent Wells on Wednesday, BP’s vice president. “We have reached a good point, but now we have to make it permanent”.