BP: "We cannot be confident" that dome will cap the spill

Here’s the Good News of the Day regarding the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As British Petroleum and its partners lower a dome onto the broken equipment onto the drilling equipment, the company says it “cannot be confident” it will actually stop the oil from spewing out into the Gulf. This solution works at much shallower depths, but has never been tried at 5,000 feet. Apparently, though, it’s the only play in the playbook:

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Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham says that it’s “impossible” to move on energy or immigration now:

A key Republican senator negotiating with Democrats on a climate change bill said Friday it’s “become impossible” to pass the legislation now because of disagreements over offshore drilling and immigration reform.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that Congress needs to move forward in a political climate that gives proponents the best chance for success.

“Regrettably, in my view, this has become impossible in the current environment,” he said in a statement. “I believe there could be more than 60 votes for this bipartisan concept in the future. But there are not nearly 60 votes today and I do not see them materializing until we deal with the uncertainty of the immigration debate and the consequences of the oil spill.”

Graham’s not the only one saying this. A source on Capitol Hill told me earlier today that Democrats are unusually subdued about energy policy after the spill. Even Barbara Boxer hasn’t had much to say about it, even though one might expect advocates of cap-and-trade to exploit the disaster in order to build support for climate-change legislation. Democrats may believe that nothing will garner support for the Boxer-Kerry bill in the Senate and that focusing attention on the disaster plays more into an argument of incompetence by the Obama administration than for an eeeeeeeevil-oil-company meme.

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