BP said Friday that it would go ahead with plans to place a final cement seal in its stricken well in the Gulf of Mexico, after crews drilling a relief well succeeded in intercepting the well.

The company said in a statement that the relief well intercepted the stricken well’s annulus — the space between the well’s metal casing and the surrounding rock — nearly 13,000 feet below the seabed at 4:30 p.m. Central time Thursday.

BP said tests showed there was no cement, oil or gas in the annulus at the interception point, so there was no need to pump heavy drilling mud into the annulus through the relief well, a procedure known as a bottom kill. Instead, crews will pump only cement into the annulus, forming a final seal.

BP said it expected the damaged well to be completely sealed today. Once it is sealed, the statement said, crews will begin procedures to abandon the well.

The interception was first announced in a statement late Thursday by Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral leading the federal response to the spill.

White House holding back information, lawsuit charges

WASHINGTON — An environmental whistleblower group charges in a lawsuit that the Obama administration is withholding documents that would reveal why it issued an estimate on the gravity of the Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout that later was proved to be far too low.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility sued Thursday in federal court, claiming that federal officials are withholding hundreds of pages of reports and communications between scientists on the Flow Rate Technical Group, who were tasked with making the estimates, and Marcia McNutt, the head of the U.S. Geological Survey, who chaired the technical group and released a summary of its findings.

The controversy over the oil flow estimates is part of a broader question about whether political appointees at the top of the Obama administration have manipulated and publicized incorrect or incomplete scientific information in an attempt to tamp down anxiety and anger over the world’s worst oil accident.

“This lawsuit will produce Exhibit A for the case that science is still being manipulated under the current administration,” Jeff Ruch, the executive director of the environmental organization, said in a statement.

— McClatchy-Tribune News Service