LAFAYETTE, La. -- The threat of summer storms moving through the Gulf of Mexico this week has raised the possibility that BP's recently shuttered well may have to be reopened as a safety precaution if work crews are forced to head for safe harbor.

A tropical system that hovered Wednesday near Haiti is expected to move across southern Florida into the eastern Gulf this weekend, bringing heavy thunderstorms and high seas to the area affected by the spill.

AccuWeather.com meteorologists say the system has a 60 percent chance of maturing into a tropical storm and a 10 percent chance of reaching hurricane strength, particularly if it crosses the warm waters between Florida and Cuba.

The weather report is yet another challenge facing BP and federal officials, who already worry that the sealed cap, which has kept the oil from gushing into Gulf waters for a week, may further damage the well's underground pipes and cause oil to erupt through the ocean floor.

Video-equipped robot submarines, seismic sensors and other equipment are monitoring for such leaks or fissures. On Wednesday, Thad Allen, the federal oil-spill response chief, said experts in Houston were considering their options if the ships monitoring for leaks had to leave the scene for what could be a few days to several weeks.

Those options include devising ways to monitor the well from an onshore location, leaving the cap sealed and unseen, or opening the cap and letting oil flow into the Gulf again temporarily, relieving pressure in the well and lessening the risk of a catastrophe. "This is necessarily going to be a judgment call based on the risk associated by our science team," Mr. Allen said.

The ships that operate the robot submarines are some of the quickest and nimblest at the spill site, located some 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. They would probably be gone for only three or four days if a big storm were to come. But bad weather could force more cumbersome vessels to abandon the spill site for as long as two weeks, which could delay the interception of the original well with a relief well, considered the ultimate solution to the disaster.

The closest of two relief wells is scheduled to intercept the original well at the end of July, weather permitting. Permanently plugging the leak with mud and concrete could then take "from a number of days to a few weeks," said BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells.

"We're just continuing to monitor the weather," Mr. Wells said in a Wednesday afternoon conference call with reporters. "There's nothing that says we need to leave the location right now."

Mr. Wells also said the company has asked the government to approve plans to tamp down the oil with mud and concrete from the cap, a process called a "static kill." He said a successful static kill could hasten and improve the odds of successfully plugging the well from the bottom.

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