BP to try well kill Tuesday

fireblade

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BP Plc said on Friday it could seal its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well by next week as the House of Representatives voted to toughen regulation of offshore energy drilling

Incoming BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said the British energy giant would attempt a "static kill" operation on Tuesday to try to plug the blown-out deep-sea well that caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

This marks a slight delay. The U.S. official overseeing the spill response, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, had said on Thursday he hoped the operation to pump mud and cement into the well could be performed as early as this weekend.

As BP moved ahead with its plans, U.S. government scientists said South Florida, the Florida Keys and the U.S. East Coast likely will be spared from oil pollution from the spill despite earlier dire warnings.

The House, by a vote of 209-193, passed reforms to offshore drilling practices in response to the spill, which caused an economic and environmental disaster along the U.S. Gulf Coast. President Barack Obama supports the bill.

Gulf Coast Democrats secured an amendment to the legislation to end Obama's moratorium on deepwater drilling for oil companies that meet new federal safety requirements. The current moratorium runs through the end of November.

By the time the full Congress completes action on the offshore drilling bill -- and it is uncertain that it will -- it could be November or later. The Senate has not yet acted on its version of the legislation.

Obama's fellow Democrats in the House rejected Republican warnings that the bill would slash U.S. oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, a major supplier of domestic energy, and cut high-paying drilling jobs.

The "static kill" process will involve pumping drilling mud and cement into the well from the top to plug it. A relief well is intended to intersect the ruptured well deep under the seabed to allow mud and cement to be pumped from the bottom to provide a permanent fix.

No new oil has leaked since BP installed a tight-fitting containment cap atop the well on July 15 as a temporary fix.

"We want to absolutely kill this well. The static kill will be attempted on Tuesday. The relief well by the end of the month (August)," said Dudley, BP's top executive on the Gulf oil spill who will replace Tony Hayward as CEO on October 1.

At a briefing on Friday, Allen said "static kill" would be delayed until Tuesday to clean out debris and sediment found in the relief well, which has bored deep into the earth and is intended to plug the leak from the bottom.

Once cleaned out, BP can finish cementing the pipe into the relief well and move forward with a static kill, Allen said.

In his first news conference on the Gulf since being named to replace the much-criticized Hayward, Dudley stressed BP's commitment to restoring the coast.

"We are scaling back the number of vessels offshore but we are not stopping cleanup operations by any means," he said. "We are not complacent about this at all."

Millions of gallons (liters) of oil have poured into the Gulf since April, when a rig exploded and sank, killing 11 workers and triggering the leak from the BP-owned well.

Officials have expressed cautious optimism the oil already spilled into the ocean is dissipating. The spill has hurt the livelihoods of fishermen and other business owners along the Gulf Coast and presented a challenge to BP and to Obama.

HOUSE PASSAGE

The legislation passed by the House would eliminate the current $75 million liability cap for offshore operations. It also would prohibit oil companies with poor safety records from bidding for new offshore drilling leases, effectively barring BP from starting new U.S. offshore operations.

The measure would impose tighter requirements for well design and well cementing for offshore projects and on equipment known as blowout preventers intended to prevent well ruptures like the one that occurred at BP's well in April.

The Senate is considering a similar bill, but senators are unlikely to pass it before their summer recess on August 6. If the Senate passes a bill, the two chambers would have to resolve any differences between their versions and pass a compromise one before Obama could sign it into law.

Democrats said the bill would make offshore drilling safer for workers and protect the environment from future spills.

"If you want to apologize for Big Oil, go right ahead, but the American people are not on your side on this one," Democratic Representative Jim McGovern told his Republican colleagues.

Scientists had issued dire warnings that oil from the spill would float into the loop current in the gulf and ride the powerful Gulf Stream current around the fragile islands at the southern tip of Florida and up the Atlantic Coast as far as North Carolina. But the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that was now unlikely.

The oil that remains in the Gulf is hundreds of miles (km) from the loop current. That oil is in the process of breaking down and will not travel far, NOAA said.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Tom Doggett in Washington, Matthew Bigg in Atlanta and Kristen Hays in Houston; Writing by Ed Stoddard; Editing by Will Dunham)

BP to try well kill Tuesday  - Yahoo! News UK

NASA - Home
 
No new oil has leaked since BP installed a tight-fitting containment cap atop the well on July 15 as a temporary fix.

Seriously!!

Anyone who's been following it knows that statement isn't true!!

Oil,methane and natural gas are leaking from everywhere but the cap.

Anyway,good luck with the well kill BP.

Considering the idiots drilled into the Rigel Gas Field then it should be fun to see what happens. Sensing an 'Epic Fail' on the cards with this one.
 
No where in that report is it saying that oil or gas are still being released which is what the Examiner article said.
 
For that matter the ABC article explicitly states that oil hasn't been leaking into the Gulf since mid-July.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-work-relief-continue-permanently-kill/story?id=11394670&page=2 said:
"There is no oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico," Allen said. "We've successfully shut in this well. We've had stability from July 15."
 
No where in that report is it saying that oil or gas are still being released which is what the Examiner article said.

:Laugh:

Fair enough. I'll leave you both to go and bury your head back in the sand then!
 
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:Laugh:

Fair enough. I'll leave you to go and bury your head back in the sand then!

OK, mountain of reporting from trusted sites vs a single report from somewhere I have never heard off ?

Did that site report that 9/11 was caused by US government by any chance ?
 
No where in that report is it saying that oil or gas are still being released which is what the Examiner article said.

No it didn't.


BP well pressure test indicates static kill failure: Is BP avoiding the relief well?

* August 12th, 2010 9:35 pm

The latest round of verbal gymnastics coming from BP is hard to decipher. But regardless of how the words are framed, the conclusion is the same. BP’s static kill procedure did not work.


BP executive Kent Wells admitted on August 10, that pressure readings from the Macondo well are at 4,200 PSI. If the cementing process has been successful, the pressure readings would be zero, according to the Daily Hurricane.

“The fact that they're getting pressure now tells me that they are indeed communicated to the reservoir below… pressure will build on the wellhead, which is exactly what's happening," said expert Bob Cavnar.

Oil Industry insiders have been saying for months that with damage to the casing, which BP quietly admitted to in May, no method of top kill could succeed. Yet BP keeps trying different types of top kill - as if the relief well were something to be avoided.

BP did not spend $100,000 (each) on two relief wells, just to try to avoid using them – unless there is something they are not revealing.

Touted from the beginning of the April 20 disaster as the best way to permanently seal the well, there could be only one reason for BP to seemingly be avoiding the use of the relief well; they may have data that indicates it could reopen the leak - or fail.

If the relief well fails, BP is out of options.




Where in that Examiner report does it say that oil and gas are leaking by the way??

The Examiner is a national US paper...not some quack site. It was only quoted from there as it was the 1st place to break that the static kill had failed.
 
Examiner.com - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

However, the main link for the article, a blog by the name of Daily Hurricane, is actually an interesting read. Is was in the mainstream news that oil and methane are reported as to be leaking from the sea bed near the well head (not from the well head), but it isn't clear if this is natural or a result of disaster.

Investors have been a little twitchy over BP the past week. Share prices have gone from 434p last Friday to 416p today, and where at one point as low as 402p for intra-day trading.
 
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I remember them reporting that oil and gas are still leaking from the sea bed but also I believed it mentioned that this could well have been a natural phenomenon.

As for the examiner, it appears to have some history in its lack of checking articles for accuracy.

Similiarly I remember 7/7 happening and sky news having a lot of 'breaking' news which BBC was 15 to 30 minutes behind on. Guess which one more news accurate ?
 
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