Doug Mills/The New York Times

After signing the bill Wednesday in the Ronald Reagan Building, President Obama shared the moment with Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman.

Within minutes of the bill signing, several Wall Street groups were leveling criticism at the new regulations, reflecting Mr. Obama’s increasingly fractious relations with corporate America. The Business Roundtable complained in a statement that the law “takes our country in the wrong direction” and may discourage investment and job growth, echoing concerns made by the United States Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations. In a signal that Wall Street is ready to keep lobbying as regulators work out the details of how to apply the new law, Larry Burton, the roundtable’s executive director, said: “We will work with President Obama and policy makers to ensure this legislation is implemented in a manner that continues to promote sustainable economic growth and job creation.” Still, Democrats and White House officials were euphoric about passage of the legislation, a response to the 2008 financial crisis that tipped the nation into the worst recession since the Great Depression. The law subjects more financial companies to federal oversight and regulates many derivatives contracts while creating a consumer protection regulator and a panel to detect risks to the financial system. A number of the details have been left for regulators to work out, inevitably setting off complicated tangles down the road that could last for years. But “because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes,” Mr. Obama said before signing the legislation. “There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period.” He was surrounded by a group of mostly Democratic lawmakers and advocates of the overhaul legislation, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, as well as Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairmen of crucial committees involved in developing the legislation. The White House orchestrated a major signing ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building across from the Commerce Department to trumpet the new law. Mr. Obama took pains to try to show how the complex legislation, with its dense pages on derivatives practices, will protect ordinary Americans. “If you’ve ever applied for a credit card, a student loan or a mortgage, you know the feeling of signing your name to pages of barely understandable fine print,” Mr. Obama said. “But what often happens as a result is that many Americans are caught by hidden fees and penalties, or saddled with loans they can’t afford.” He said the law would crack down on abusive practices in the mortgage industry, simplifying contracts and ending hidden fees and penalties, “so folks know what they’re signing.” The law expands federal banking and securities regulation from its focus on banks and public markets, subjecting a wider range of financial companies to government oversight. It also imposes regulation for the first time on opaque markets like the enormous trade in credit derivatives. It creates a council of federal regulators, led by the Treasury secretary, to coordinate the detection of risks to the financial system, and it provides new powers to constrain and even dismantle troubled companies. And it creates a powerful regulator, to be appointed by the president and housed in the Federal Reserve, to protect consumers of financial products. The first visible result may come in about two years, the deadline for the consumer regulator to create a simplified disclosure form for mortgage loans. Mr. Obama acknowledged three Republican senators — Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts — who broke with their party to approve the bill, saying that they “put partisanship aside, judged the bill on the merits and voted for reform.”

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats broke through a stubborn Republican filibuster Tuesday and pressed to restart jobless benefits for 2 1/2 million Americans still unable to find work in the frail national economic recovery. The Democrats were victorious by the single vote of a new senator sworn in only moments earlier.

Senators voted 60-40 to move ahead on the bill, clearing the way for a final vote in the chamber on Wednesday.

The recovery from the nation’s long and deep recession has produced relatively few new jobs so far, and millions of people’s unemployment benefits began running out seven weeks ago as Congress bogged down in an impasse over whether the $34 billion cost of a fresh extension of benefits should be paid for with budget cuts or be added to the $13 trillion national debt.

Democrats emphasized the plight of the unemployed and argued that putting money in the pockets of jobless families would also boost economic revival.

“This bill is about jobs because unemployment insurance goes to people who will spend it immediately,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. “That would increase economic demand. And that would help support our fragile economic recovery.”

But the numbers are far smaller than last year’s $862 billion stimulus legislation. Republicans have blocked Democratic add-ons, such as aid to state governments.

“It’s too small to have any noticeable impact on the economy’s growth rate,” said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors. “But the benefits do provide an important safety net for people during these difficult economic times.”

The economy has added 882,000 jobs so far this year — but many of those were only temporary positions as the federal government geared up to conduct the U.S. Census.

Many Republicans have voted in the past for deficit-financed benefits extension — including twice under the most recent Bush administration. But with the deficit well in excess of $1 trillion, they now say it should be paid for with cuts elsewhere in the $3.7 trillion federal budget.

“We’ve repeatedly voted for similar bills in the past. And we are ready to support one now,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “What we do not support — and we make no apologies for — is borrowing tens of billions of dollars to pass this bill at a time when the national debt is spinning completely out of control.”

After initially feeling political heat this winter when a lone GOP senator, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, briefly blocked a benefits extension in February, the GOP has grown increasingly comfortable opposing the legislation.

Democrats said that in tough times the government invariably lengthens the eligibility period for jobless benefits as more and more people chase fewer jobs. Such efforts have been deficit-financed — which policymakers and economists say has a stimulative effect on the economy.

The White House signaled Monday that the administration may seek another renewal of benefits in November if unemployment remains painfully high.

After Tuesday’s vote, President Barack Obama assailed Republicans for “obstruction and game playing” and promised to redouble his efforts to win enactment of legislation to help small businesses and cash-starved states and to renew an expired middle-class tax cut.

The vote to break the filibuster was a modest victory for Obama and the Democrats, whose more ambitious hopes for jobs legislation have mostly fizzled in the face of GOP opposition in the Senate.

The jobless benefits fight is looming as an issue for the upcoming midterm elections, with Democrats assailing Republicans as harshly seeking to deny benefits to the almost 5 million jobless people whose six months of state-paid benefits have run out. The measure provides federally financed extensions that allow the chronically jobless up to 99 weeks of benefits averaging $309 a week.

But Republicans cast themselves as standing against out-of-control budget deficits, a stand that’s popular with their core conservative supporters and the tea party activists whose support they’re courting in hopes of retaking control of Congress.

The filibuster-breaking vote came moments after Democrat Carte Goodwin was sworn in to succeed West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, who died last month at 92. Goodwin was the crucial 60th senator needed to defeat the Republican filibuster. The Senate gallery was packed with Goodwin supporters, who broke into applause as he cast his “aye” vote.

Two Republicans, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, voted to end the filibuster. Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the lone Democrat to break with his party and vote to sustain it.

After a final Senate vote, the House is expected to approve the legislation and send it to Obama later this week.

Tuesday’s action capped months of battling over the jobless benefits extension, which started in February as just one piece of a broader jobs package that included many other provisions such as restoring expired business tax breaks and helping state governments pay their bills.

That broader measure advanced in fits and starts — including a measure that passed the Senate in March that would have added $100 billion to the deficit. But the sands shifted and it collapsed in June despite being cut back considerably.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., then pressed a bare-bones jobless benefits measure — only to fall one vote short because of Byrd’s death.

The measure would reauthorize the extended benefits program through the end of November, providing payments to millions of people who’ve been out of work for six months or more. Maximum benefits in some states are far higher than the $309 a week nationwide average payment. In Massachusetts, the top benefit is $943 a week; in Mississippi, it is $235.

This would be the eighth extension of unemployment benefits since July 2008, at a total cost to taxpayers of more than $120 billion.

NEW ORLEANS – BP’s broken well was leaking oil and gas again Monday for the first time since the company capped it last week, but the Obama administration’s spill chief said it was no cause for alarm. The stopper was left in place for now.

Ever since the cap was used to bottle up the oil last week, engineers have been watching underwater cameras and monitoring pressure and seismic readings to see whether the well would hold or spring a new leak, perhaps one that could rupture the seafloor and make the disaster even worse.

Small amounts of oil and gas started coming from the cap late Sunday, but “we do not believe it is consequential at this time,” retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said.

Also, seepage from the seafloor was detected over the weekend less than two miles away, but Allen said it probably has nothing to do with the well. Oil and gas are known to ooze naturally from fissures in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

At an afternoon briefing in Washington, Allen said BP could keep the cap closed at least another 24 hours, as long as the company remained alert for leaks.

BP and the government had been at odds over the company’s desire to simply leave the cap in place and employ it like a giant cork in a bottle until a relief well being drilled deep underground can be used to plug up the well permanently.

Allen initially said his preference was to pipe oil through the cap to tankers on the surface to reduce the slight chance that the buildup of pressure inside the well would cause a new blowout. That plan would require releasing millions more gallons of oil into the ocean for a few days during the transition — a spectacle BP apparently wants to avoid.

On Monday, Allen budged a bit, saying unless larger problems develop, he’s not inclined to open the cap.

Also on the table: Pumping drilling mud through the top of the cap and into the well bore to stop up the oil flow. The idea is similar to the failed top kill plan that couldn’t overcome the pressure of the geyser pushing up.

BP said it could work now because there’s less oil to fight against, but it wasn’t clear how such a method would affect the cap’s stability. Allen said the relief well was still the plan for a permanent fix.

BP and the government are still trying to understand why pressure readings from the well are lower than expected. Allen offered two possible explanations: The reservoir the oil is gushing from is dwindling, or there is an undiscovered leak somewhere down in the well.

“I’m not prepared to say the well is shut in until the relief well is done,” which is still several weeks away, Allen said. “There are too many uncertainties.”

BP and the Coast Guard learned that lesson the hard way after they initially said no oil was coming from the site of the Deepwater Horizon rig after it exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. Even after it became clear there was a leak, the company and its federal overseers drastically underestimated its size for weeks.

Robert Carney, a Louisiana State University expert on biological oceanography, said the seepage is far enough away from the well that it could be occurring naturally.

“You have little bubbles rising up from the bottom frequently; that’s the methane gas” he said. “Oil would be a little black dot, more difficult to see. But both escape into the water regularly.”

One other possibility: There are around 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf. One of them is within two miles of BP’s blowout, and there is a second well in the area that is not in production.

While officials gave no indication that the seepage was from another well, they’re not checked for leaks, an Associated Press investigation showed this month.

Work on a permanent plug is moving steadily, with crews drilling into the side of the ruptured well from deep underground. By next week, they could start blasting in mud and cement to block off the well for good. Killing the well deep underground works more reliably than bottling it up with a cap.

Somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons have gushed into the Gulf over the past three months in one of America’s worst environment crises.

BP said the cost of dealing with the spill has now reached nearly $4 billion. The company said it has made payments totaling $207 million to settle claims for damages. Almost 116,000 claims have been submitted and more than 67,500 payments have been made. BP stock was down slightly Monday.

NEW ORLEANS – BP and the Obama administration offered significantly differing views Sunday on whether the capped Gulf of Mexico oil well will have to be reopened, a contradiction that may be an effort by the oil giant to avoid blame if crude starts spewing again.

Pilloried for nearly three months as it tried repeatedly to stop the leak, BP PLC capped the nearly mile-deep well Thursday and wants to keep it that way. The government’s plan, however, is to eventually pipe oil to the surface, which would ease pressure on the fragile well but would require up to three more days of oil spilling into the Gulf.

“No one associated with this whole activity … wants to see any more oil flow into the Gulf of Mexico,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, said Sunday. “Right now we don’t have a target to return the well to flow.”

An administration official familiar with the spill oversight, however, told The Associated Press that a seep and possible methane were found near the busted oil well. The official spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because an announcement about the next steps had not been made yet.

The concern all along — since pressure readings on the cap weren’t as high as expected — was a leak elsewhere in the wellbore, meaning the cap may have to be reopened to prevent the environmental disaster from becoming even worse and harder to fix.

The official, who would not clarify what is seeping near the well, also said BP is not complying with the government’s demand for more monitoring.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration’s spill response chief, demanded BP provide results of further testing of the seabed by 9 p.m. EDT Sunday night.

“When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours. I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed,” Allen said in a letter to BP Managing Director Bob Dudley.

When asked about the situation earlier Sunday before the letter was released, BP spokesman Mark Salt would only say that “we continue to work very closely with all government scientists on this.”

Allen insisted Sunday that “nothing has changed” since Saturday, when he said oil would eventually be piped to surface ships. The government is overseeing BP’s work to stop the leak, which ultimately is to be plugged using a relief well.

Allen decided to extend testing of the cap that had been scheduled to end Sunday, the official who spoke on condition of anonymity said. That means the oil will stay in the well for now as scientists continue run tests and monitor pressure readings. The official didn’t say how long that would take.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security referred questions to a statement issued by Allen; neither he nor BP officials could explain the apparent contradiction in plans.

Suttles’ comments carved out an important piece of turf for BP: If Allen sticks with the containment plan and oil again pours forth into the Gulf, even briefly, it will be the government’s doing, not BP’s.

The company very much wants to avoid a repeat of the live underwater video that showed millions of gallons of oil spewing from the blown well for weeks.

“I can see why they’re pushing for keeping the cap on and shut in until the relief well is in place,” said Daniel Keeney, president of a Dallas-based public relations firm.

The government wants to eliminate any chance of making matters worse, while BP is loath to lose the momentum it gained the moment it finally halted the leak, Keeney said.

“They want to project being on the same team, but they have different end results that benefit each,” he said.

Oil would have to be released under Allen’s plan, which would ease concerns that the capped reservoir might force its way out through another route. Those concerns stem from pressure readings in the cap that have been lower than expected.

Scientists still aren’t sure whether the pressure readings mean a leak elsewhere in the well bore, possibly deep down in bedrock, which could make the seabed unstable. Oil would be have to be released into the water to relieve pressure and allow crews to hook up the ships, BP and Allen have said.

So far, there have been no signs of a leak.

“We’re not seeing any problems at this point with the shut-in,” Suttles said at a Sunday morning briefing.

Allen said later Sunday that scientists and engineers would continue to evaluate and monitor the cap through acoustic, sonar and seismic readings.

They’re looking to determine whether low pressure readings mean that more oil than expected poured into the Gulf of Mexico since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people and touching off one of America’s worst environment crises.

“While we are pleased that no oil is currently being released into the Gulf of Mexico and want to take all appropriate action to keep it that way, it is important that all decisions are driven by the science,” Allen said in a news release.

“Ultimately, we must ensure no irreversible damage is done which could cause uncontrolled leakage from numerous points on the sea floor.”

Both Allen and BP have said they don’t know how long the trial run will continue. It was set to end Sunday afternoon, but the deadline — an extension from the original Saturday cutoff — came and went with no word on what’s next.

After little activity Sunday, robots near the well cap came to life around the time of the cutoff. It wasn’t clear what they were doing, but bubbles started swirling around as their robotic arms poked at the mechanical cap.

To plug the busted well, BP is drilling two relief wells, one of them as a backup. The company said work on the first one was far enough along that officials expect to reach the broken well’s casing, or pipes, deep underground by late this month. The subsequent job of jamming the well with mud and cement could take days or a few weeks.

It will take months, or possibly years for the Gulf to recover, though cleanup efforts continued and improvements in the water could be seen in the days since the oil stopped flowing. Somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons have spilled into the Gulf, according to government estimates.

The spill has prevented many commercial fishermen from their jobs, though some are at work with the cleanup. Some boat captains were surprised and angry to learn that the money they make from cleanup work will be deducted from the funds they would otherwise receive from a $20 billion compensation fund set up by BP.

The fund’s administrator, Kenneth Feinberg, told The Associated Press on Sunday that if BP pays fishermen wages to help skim oil and perform other cleanup work, those wages will be subtracted from the amount they get from the fund.

Longtime charter boat captain Mike Salley said he didn’t realize BP planned to deduct those earnings, and he doubted many other captains knew, either.

“I’ll keep running my boat,” he said Sunday on a dock in Orange Beach, Ala., before heading back into the Gulf to resupply other boats with boom to corral the oil. “What else can I do?”

NEW ORLEANS – The Gulf Coast found itself in an odd moment of limbo Saturday: The oil has been stopped, but no one knows if it’s corked for good.

The clock expired on BP’s 48-hour observation period and the government added another day of critical monitoring. Scientists and engineers were optimistic that the well showed no obvious signs of leaks, but were still struggling to understand puzzling pressure readings emerging from the bottom of the sea.

It’s possible the past three days will be only a brief reprieve from the flow of oil bleeding into the Gulf. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s point man on the crisis, decided Saturday that after the testing was complete, the cap will be hooked up through pipes to ships on the surface that will collect the oil.

That likely means releasing crude back into the water temporarily to relieve pressure. It still would not be gushing at the rate it had been before BP’s latest fix.

It will take months, or possibly years for the Gulf to recover. But if the coast was on edge about the impending decision, it wasn’t apparent.

In fact, there were signs that people were trying to get life — or at least a small part of it — back to normal.

In coastal Alabama, lounge chairs for rent outside of hotels were full and swimmers bobbed in emerald green water virtually oil-free, save for a few small tar balls.

Calls started flooding into the reservations switchboard at Kaiser Realty Inc. in Gulf Shores, Ala., almost as soon as BP confirmed Thursday that oil had stopped flowing into the Gulf, said marketing director Emily Gonzales.

“Are they what we want them to be? No, but it is far better than it was,” she said.

People also were fishing again, off piers and in boats, after most of the recreational waters in Louisiana were reopened late this week. More than a third of federal waters are still closed and off-limits to commercial fishermen.

“I love to fish,” said Brittany Lawson, hanging her line off a pier beside the Grand Isle Bridge. “I love to come out here.”

Lawson and her boyfriend’s family were catching redfish, mullet and flounder, but mostly hard-head catfish, a throwback fish. They planned to keep the catches they could take home.

“It is encouraging. We’re getting bites. I mean, it’s catfish. But it’s bites. It’s something,” she said.

And even though it was only days since the oil was turned off, the naked eye could spot improvements on the water. The crude appeared to be dissipating quickly on the surface of the Gulf around the Deepwater Horizon site.

Members of a Coast Guard crew that flew over the wellhead Saturday said far less oil was visible than a day earlier. Only a colorful sheen and a few long streams of rust-colored, weathered oil were apparent in an area that was covered by huge patches of black crude weeks earlier. Somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons have spilled into the Gulf, according to government estimates.

Kendra Sanders was buying Creole tomatoes at a produce stand in Jesuite Bend. “At least we still got these. Until a hurricane comes along and blows the oil in here. Then it’ll be no shrimp and no vegetables,” she said.

The one certainty is this: No new oil has been added to the mess for two days now since BP’s experimental cap was holding, at least for now.

BP began Saturday saying they were feeling “more comfortable,” though Kent Wells, a BP PLC vice president, cautioned the evaluation was not over. BP and the government want to make sure the well can stay bottled in case of a hurricane, when ships would have to leave the area.

Wells said engineers glued to an array of pressure, temperature, sonar and other sensors were seeing no evidence of oil escaping into the water or the sea floor. Undersea robots were also patrolling the well site for signs of trouble.

The cameras showed some activity midday Saturday. The robots passed a wand-like object back and forth, and appeared to be digging dirt-like debris out of a pipe. Meanwhile, a glowing globe appeared on the sea floor as bubbles swirled around. BP didn’t explain what they were doing, and to a viewer, it was like watching a foreign film without subtitles.

BP shut valves in the cap Thursday, stopping the flow of oil into the Gulf for the first time since the April 20 explosion on the leased oil rig Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and unleashed the spill 5,000 feet below the sea.

Concern that the cap could cause oil to break out of the well at the seafloor lessened.

Pressure readings Saturday morning were 6,745 pounds per square inch and rising slowly, Wells said. The figure was below the 7,500 psi that would have reassured scientists the well was not leaking, but still high enough that it could be all right.

A low pressure reading, or a falling one, could mean the oil is escaping. Wells said pressure continued to rise very slowly.

The most likely reason the pressure is low is more oil has bled out than estimated, experts say. Last week, when an old cap was removed allowing oil to flow unimpeded into the water, the spew wasn’t as violent as it had been.

“Depletion is actually pretty normal,” said Don Van Nieuwenhuise, Director of Professional Geoscience Programs at the University of Houston. “At first it flowed very powerfully, and when you’re producing too much too fast for too long, it takes longer to pull the oil.”

Either way, the cap is a temporary measure until a relief well can be completed and mud and cement can be pumped into the broken well deep underground to seal it more securely than the cap. That means the best fix still won’t be completed until later this summer.

BP is drilling two relief wells, one of them as a backup. Wells said work on the first one was far enough along that they expect to reach the broken well’s casing, or pipes, deep underground by late this month. Then the job of jamming it with mud and cement could take “a number of days through a few weeks.”

LONDON – A restoration project for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Virgin of the Rocks” has revealed new details and suggest the Renaissance artist may have painted all the picture himself, instead of with his assistants as previously thought, a British gallery said Wednesday.

The 18-month conservation project involved removing much of some badly degraded varnish that was applied to the painting in the late 1940s, enabling experts to take a much closer look at the picture’s brush strokes and styles, the National Gallery said.

The cleaning revealed the painting’s full tonal range, especially in the darker areas, and resulted in a clearer sense of how the artist intended for space to recede through the rocky landscape, the gallery said.

It also affirmed that Leonardo likely painted the entire picture himself and intended for it to be unfinished.

The restored painting showed a range of completion from the barely sketched hand of the angel to the fully realized heads of the main figures — consistent with many of Leonardo’s works. The Italian artist, said to be the “eternal perfectionist,” is thought to have left his pictures unfinished because he wished to return to them later, gallery spokesman Thomas Almeroth-Williams said.

In the past, scholars believed the different levels of finish in “Virgin of the Rocks” showed that Leonardo was helped by assistants.

The painting dates from about 1491 to 1508 and is a later version of one on display in the Louvre in Paris.

The latest cleaning project followed years of scrutiny of the masterpiece.

In 2005, experts using infrared technology found two drawings hidden beneath the surface of the picture — one design was never painted, and the second one revealed Leonardo changed his mind about the subject several times.

The painting goes back on display in the National Gallery on Wednesday.

The U.S.-led United Nations Command and North Korea held rare military talks Thursday — the first since the sinking of a South Korean warship, the Yonhap news agency reported.

An official at the U.N. Command said the meeting lasted about 90 minutes, but had no additional information about the talks, according to Yonhap.

The much-anticipated meeting between military officers representing the United Nations and North Korea took place in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

The purpose of the meeting was to “set the agenda and the protocols for general officer talks” in regards to the March 26 sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, U.N. Command spokesman David Oten told CNN earlier this week.

The United Nations formally condemned the sinking of the ship but did not specifically name North Korea — which a multinational probe found culpable in the incident.

The isolated North has maintained its innocence, rejecting the investigation findings outright, questioning the validity of the experts involved, asking to conduct its own inquiry, and telling the Security Council that North Korea is the true victim of a conspiracy.

At Thursday’s meeting, the U.N. officers were slated to be U.S. colonels, as the United States holds responsibility for U.N. security forces in Korea.

The result of the meeting could be the announcement of general-level talks or more colonel-level meetings, Oten said .

North Korea accepted a U.N. proposal for the meeting of colonel-level leaders to be a precursor to talks between generals on the contentious naval incident.

The demilitarized zone was created as part of the armistice signed between North Korea and South Korea in 1953 that halted fighting.

NEW ORLEANS – A pivotal moment in the Gulf oil crisis hit an unexpected snag Tuesday evening when officials announced they needed more time before they could begin choking off the geyser of crude at the bottom of the sea.

BP and government officials did not say what prompted the decision or when the testing on the new, tighter-fitting cap would begin. The oil giant was scheduled to start slowly shutting off valves on the 75-ton metal stack of pipes and valves Tuesday, aiming to stop the flow of oil for the first time in three months.

A series of methodical, preliminary steps were completed, including mapping the seafloor. Later Tuesday, National Incident Commander Thad Allen met with the federal energy secretary and the head of the U.S. geological survey and other scientists and geologists.

“As a result of these discussions, we decided that the process may benefit from additional analysis that will be performed tonight and tomorrow,” Allen said.

Earlier Tuesday, it seemed BP was on track to test the cap, which was lowered over the blown-out well Monday night. It is designed to be a temporary fix until the well is plugged underground.

Engineers also spent hours on a seismic survey, creating a map of the rock under the sea floor to spot potential dangers, like gas pockets. It also provides a baseline to compare with later surveys during and after the test to see if the pressure on the well is causing underground problems.

It was unclear whether there was something in the results of the survey that prompted officials to delay. Earlier, BP Vice President Kent Wells said he hadn’t heard what the results were, but he felt “comfortable that they were good.”

The next phase would be to shut the openings in the 75-ton metal stack of pipes and valves gradually, one at a time, while watching pressure gauges to see if the cap would hold or any new leaks erupted.

Once the operation gets started, it could last anywhere from six to 48 hours.

If the cap works, it will enable BP to stop the oil from gushing into the sea, either by holding all the oil inside the well machinery like a stopper or, if the pressure is too great, channeling some though pipes to as many as four collection ships.

The cap is a stopgap measure that can’t keep the oil in check permanently. To end the leak for good, the well needs to be plugged at the source. BP is drilling two relief wells through the seafloor to reach the broken well, possibly by late July, and jam it permanently with heavy drilling mud and cement. After that, the Gulf Coast faces a long cleanup.

The leak began after the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers. As of Tuesday, the 84th day of the disaster, between 90.4 and 178.6 million gallons of oil had spewed into the Gulf.

BP lowers new cap over gushing well

– BP says it has placed a new containment cap on its crippled well in the Gulf of Mexico that’s been gushing oil since an explosion and fire April 20.

The company hopes the new cap will be able to completely contain the leaking oil, but tests are still needed to determine its effectiveness.

Video supplied by BP showed robotic arms gingerly lowering the new 18-foot, 150,000-pound cap over the well.

For now, some oil continues to gush from the upper section of the new cap. That was expected and will continue until BP begins “well integrity tests” Tuesday, BP said. The process could take anywhere from six hours to two days.

If the new cap does not completely contain oil from the crippled well, some may have to be brought to the surface to waiting containment ships. But under a worst-case scenario, there could be new damage to blowout preventer.

BP said in a statement Monday night that, “It is expected, although cannot be assured, that no oil will be released to the ocean for the duration of the test. This will not however be an indication that flow from the well bore has been permanently stopped.”

It said information gathered during the test will be reviewed with relevant government agencies. The company said it’s possible the tests might be extended even further.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the man in charge of the federal response, said Monday scientists will be checking the pressure inside the well, and then determining whether the cap is holding the oil in or if crews will need to continue siphoning oil.

A critical step is making sure there’s no hydrate buildup, according to BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles.

In the best-case scenario, the containment cap would have the ability to close down the valves and slowly contain all the oil, Allen said.

But if oil collection were still necessary, over the next two to three weeks, 60,000 to 80,000 barrels (2.52 million to 3.36 million gallons) a day could be collected as part of the containment process, according to BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells. That’s because the new containment cap would eventually allow four collection ships to access the well, rather than the maximum of three allowed by the old cap, Allen said earlier.

While robots worked to replace the old cap, crude oil continued to leak out. Scientists estimate that 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil have spewed daily from BP’s breached well.

Now, even if oil does have to be sent to the surface, BP said it has more resources at its disposal. The oil-gathering ship, the Helix Producer, was put in place Monday to recover oil, joining the Q4000, which is already active.

Between the two ships, crews should be able to collect up to 33,000 barrels of oil per day, Suttles said.

Meanwhile, as efforts to place the containment cap on the well were unfolding, the U.S. Interior Department said Monday it is issuing a new moratorium order in a second effort to block deepwater oil and natural gas projects.

But the was opposition from a key Democratic senator and even some drilling companies that limit their activities close to shore.

The government said the new moratorium is to “protect communities, coasts, and wildlife” while oil and gas companies implement safety measures to reduce the risks of blowouts and oil spills associated with deepwater drilling. The ban will be in effect through November 30, 2010, or until Interior Secretary Ken Salazar determines that deepwater drilling operations can proceed safely.

It would prevent further deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico until officials determine what went wrong in the April 20 explosion and fire at an oil rig that led to oil gushing into the ocean 5,000 feet below the surface.

A previous six-month ban issued in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster was thrown out by a federal judge in New Orleans. Last week, a federal appeals panel rejected the government’s request to overturn the lower court judge’s decision. The new Interior Department order supersedes the old one.

“More than eighty days into the BP oil spill, a pause on deepwater drilling is essential and appropriate to protect communities, coasts, and wildlife from the risks that deepwater drilling currently pose,” Salazar said in a statement. “I am basing my decision on evidence that grows every day of the industry’s inability in the deepwater to contain a catastrophic blowout, respond to an oil spill, and to operate safely.”

He added, “I remain open to modifying the new deepwater drilling suspensions based on new information.”

But Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana called the moratorium “unnecessary, ill-conceived and a second economic disaster for the Gulf Coast.”

She spoke before a presidential commission, tasked with reviewing the response to the oil spill and making recommendations about the future of offshore drilling. Landrieu called the BP oil spill the “exception instead of the rule” and said the deepwater drilling moratorium will kill jobs. The National Oil Spill Commission is holding meetings in New Orleans Monday and Tuesday.

“Whether you call it a moratorium, a suspension or a pause, the result will still be a substantial loss of jobs,” Landrieu said. “Even the revised moratorium will force thousands of hard working Louisianians and others in the Gulf Coast to the unemployment line. So I strongly urge this commission to take a quick and decisive action to immediately lift moratorium to save our business and our economy.”

Cherri Foytlin, whose husband works for a firm that supplies tools to drilling companies, agreed.

“What I want the commission to walk away with is that we are people down here, and the moratorium and the oil spill affects people and not just big companies. When you rage against big oil like BP and Exxon, you’re really raging against me,” she said.

Shallow water drilling activities can continue to move forward, under the Interior Department’s order, if operators comply with all safety and environmental requirements. The department said that’s because they don’t present the same type or level of risks that deepwater drilling operations can, it said.

But some concerns are being expressed even by firms that limit their drilling activities to shallow water.

Randy Stilley, president and chief executive officer of Seahawk Drilling, said in a statement that while shallow water drilling supposedly is being allowed under the new order, “the reality is that permits for shallow water drilling are not proceeding despite the widespread efforts being made by the industry to honor the letter and spirit of new Interior regulatory standards.” Jim Noe, senior vice president and general Counsel of Hercules Offshore, added, “To date, and despite assurances from the White House and the Interior Department, about one-third of the shallow water fleet has been idled by the application of what can only be called a de facto moratorium.”

As efforts continued Monday to get the new cap in place, Allen and BP executives emphasized that work was also continuing on two relief wells, which he called “the final solution” to shutting down the leaking well.

The first relief well is now five feet away from the main well and, at 17,840 feet deep, it’s 30 feet above the hoped-for final casing point, BP’s Suttles said Monday. That’s where BP will run additional tests, then aim for the final intersection point. Given the closeness to the target, he said that BP was estimating “kill” operations to shut down the main well could take place at the end of the month.

The second relief well, which has been drilled as a redundancy measure at the behest of the Obama administration, is now at 15,874 feet deep, Suttles said. He added that BP is going to stop drilling that well farther unless it ends up being needed.

“If the relief wells for whatever reason happen to fail, the other option we are working on how do we install what I will call a permanent collection system, which is where we’re working on pipelines to other facilities,” BP’s senior vice president, Kent Wells, told the National Oil Spill Commission on Monday.

While response crews were hard at work over the weekend, seven members of the National Oil Spill Commission visited different areas of the Gulf Coast affected by the oil disaster ahead of their meetings in New Orleans. Committee co-chairman William K. Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, went to Gulfport, Mississippi, to talk with disaster victims and inspect recovery efforts.

The visits and meetings will help the presidential commission “begin to lay the groundwork for our efforts going forward, to determine what really to concentrate on and where to put our priorities and, very importantly, what the people most affected by all of this think about how effective the response has been,” Reilly said.

President Barack Obama established the bipartisan commission last month and gave members six months to investigate the oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. The panel will listen to public comments and official testimony from BP, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on the recovery efforts.