Brisbane, Australia (Platts)--17May2010/812 am EDT/1212 GMT

UK-based oil major BP is determined to clean up the oil spill from the Macondo well in the US Gulf of Mexico, David Eyton, BP group vice president for research and technology, said Monday.

"We had some success last night [Sunday], it seems, in at least temporarily taking the oil from the leak to a drill ship and processing it," Eyton told the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association's annual conference in Brisbane. "We are doing everything in our capability worldwide to try and stem the oil leak and clean it up," he added.

On Sunday, BP said in a statement it had inserted a mile-long siphon tube into Macondo and had transferred some oil and natural gas to a surface ship. BP senior executive vice president Kent Wells told a Houston press briefing that he could not gauge how much oil and gas was flowing through the tube, but now that initial efforts had met with success, crews were aiming to ramp up the volume over the next few days. E

yton said the relief operation was on an unprecedented scale, with dozens of companies, hundreds of ships and more than 10,000 people involved.

The Macondo well is estimated to be spilling 5,000 b/d of crude into the Gulf after an explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20, killing 11 of the 126-person crew. BP operates the well and owns a 65% stake, with partners Anadarko (25%) and Japan's Mitsui (10%).

--Christine Forster, christine_forster@platts.com