Obama spill chief says seepage detected 2 miles from BP’s oil cap coming from another well.

Feds: Seepage near BP cap coming from another well

WASHINGTON — The federal government’s oil spill chief said Tuesday that seepage detected two miles from BP’s oil cap is coming from another well.

There are two wells within two miles of BP’s blowout, one that has been abandoned and another that is not in production.

“It’s actually closer to that facility than it is to the Macondo well,” the one that blew out, Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said at a Tuesday afternoon briefing. “The combination of that and the fact that it’s not uncommon to have seepage around these” abandoned wells is what convinced engineers that BP’s well wasn’t the source of the seepage, he said.

There around 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf, and an Associated Press investigation showed this month that they’re not checked for leaks.

Allen also says five leaks in and around the broken well are more like ‘drips’ and don’t mean the well is unstable. He’s extended testing of the experimental cap by another day, which means the oil will remain shut in.

The mechanical cap has stopped the oil since Thursday. But several leaks had caused mounting concern that the cap was displacing pressure and causing leaks deep underground.

If oil is leaking through bedrock and mud, it could cause instability in the sea floor and make the environmental disaster even worse and harder to fix.