BP is scrambling to find a place to dump large volumes of sludge that have built up in its Alaska pipelines after the UK company failed to perform high-tech "pigging'' cleaning and corrosion checks on some lines for up to 16 years.

The problem is so severe that BP, three months after the US Department of Transportation (DoT) ordered BP to use high-tech equipment to check the lines for corrosion, has missed today's deadline to do so. It has yet to rid the pipes of sludge in order to make way for the tests.