You'd think. But you'd also think they could drop a heavy cover over it. Until that didn't work. There probably are lots of issues that aren't obvious to normal people. They did use the military, I saw an army guy on TV saying there's nothing they can do but build defenses and sit back and wait for the oil to come - can't exactly drop a bomb on it!

One possible issue might be that if you close off the pipe, the gas/oil just comes out around the outside of the pipe.