When oil, gas and condensate began seeping into the Timor Sea PTTEP estimated it would take 50 days to plug the well which is located about 250 kilometers off the Kimberley region of the West Australian coast line. Three previous attempts by PTTEP Australasia to plug the leak, 2.5 kilometers below the sea bed by pumping it full of heavy mud have failed.Environmental groups are already calling attention to the accident in the Timor Sea off Australia’s coast. Right now, the spill has just a bit part in the Senate energy fight. But if environmentalists can push it to center stage, it could recall the fallout from another accident: The 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. That Alaskan spill is widely seen as slowing momentum at the time to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. It remains off-limits today.The spill off the western Australian coast spewed oil into the ocean for 10 weeks, eventually engulfing a platform and the attached drilling rig in flames.