Relief tunnel should reach BP Gulf well by weekend

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: Associated Press

Three months into the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government's spill chief says a relief tunnel should finally reach BP's broken well by the weekend, meaning the gusher could be snuffed for good within two weeks.

After several days of concern about the well's stability and the leaky cap keeping the oil mostly bottled up, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Tuesday that engineers concluded the risk of a bigger blowout was minimal and were getting closer to pumping mud into the column to permanently seal it.

"We continue to be pleased with the progress," Allen said in Washington, giving the go-ahead to keep the well cap shut for at least 24 more hours and possibly longer.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=11215038

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I have no idea what this means in regards to the static kill being on or off now.

[PassingFair]

1. They always said they would have it handled by August.

This must have been Plan A

[Canuckistanian]

2. Relief "tunnel"?

That's an odd word to use.

[Baclava]

3. "Business Week" writers, can't expect much from them - here's more details:

Latest BP Press Conference transcript:

from the horse's mouth or ass or whatever...


http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_response/STAGING/local_assets/downloads_pdfs/BP_technical_audio_07202010.pdf

Kent Wells: Just talk about three things similar to yesterday, relief wells, the well integrity test, and how we’re progressing on the concept of the static kill.

First, in terms of our number one relief well, as you heard me talk about yesterday, we’re opening the hole. We’ve just got a little ways left to go, probably within 50, 60 feet of the bottom of the hole. Once we reach the bottom we’ll do what we call circulate bottoms up to make sure the holes clean and then we’ll start pulling out of the hole to run casing and that will take place over Wednesday and Thursday followed by cementing. And of course, that all assumes that we have no issues, no weather, whatever that could possibly disrupt that. But that’s sort of the plan.

So everything’s looking good and as I told you yesterday, the relief well is exactly where we want it, pointed in the right direction. So we’re feeling good about that.

Once again, just remind everybody, and then the intercept of the Macondo well is still for the end of July and then the kill procedure, dependent upon whether we have flow up the annulus casing or both, could take anywhere from a number of days to a few weeks.

In terms of the well integrity tests, the pressure continues to steadily rise. It’s now at 6834. It’s rising at less than one PSI per hour. This is what we’d expect to see. You know it’s just starting to slowly increase. It’s still very much aligned with what we were talking about in that it’s following a predicted path and so that’s all going – going well.

Our monitoring continues on in all the different aspects and at this point, we do not have any anomalies or evidence that would say we do not have integrity. Doesn’t mean we have proven we have integrity – we don’t have any evidence that says we do not have integrity and that’s why we want to continue with this testing. That’s why if you heard - listen to Admiral Allen, we think its prudent just to continue on the test in 24 hour increments. But as each day goes along, it gives us more confidence with the rising pressure and the monitoring going on.

And then in terms of the couple of gas leaks that you probably observed on the BLP and capping stack. Those are just coming from places where we have what we call (metal) seals. Those are small leaks that are as a result of gas. Those connections have been tested to very high pressures in the case of the capping stack we actually tested it to 15,000 PSI with water and with no leaks, and it’s just when we – we probably got a gas bubble that’s formed up there and that’s why we have that very slow leak. It’s nothing that we’re concerned about.

And then in terms of the static kill – and once again, I want to reinforce, no decisions have been made yet on proceeding forward with that. But we are continuing with preparation and planning. We continue to get equipment lined out, what we would want to do, making sure that we will have the right equipment out there to do it, writing procedures, starting to get procedures approved.

At the same time, we’re doing testes with scientists, challenging the way we’re thinking about this, what we’re doing, so we’ve got parallel paths going on that’s leading towards somewhere ideally in the next day or two that we’d be in position through unified command to make a decision whether we’d go forward with that.

And then I know, you know understanding how does this static kill work with a bottom kill from the relief well. Over the next couple days I’ll look to put together a technical video with some animation to try to demonstrate how that is. It’s not overly complicated, but it’s – I think with a little animation and some video, we can bring some clarity to it. Because I think without that it’s actually difficult to describe it. So we’ll look to do that in the next couple days if at all possible. And of course, that would be once again contingent upon its decided that’s the way to go forward and we’ll keep you informed on that.

[slackmaster]

4. It can't be perfectly vertical, otherwise it would never intersect the stricken well

That's an odd word to use.

English is an odd language.

I love it.