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Disaster looms as oil slick reaches US coast

Engineers hoped to complete a final test by Monday evening to determine whether to proceed with the static kill. If the test is successful, officials said, engineers will spend most of Tuesday and possibly into Thursday slowly pumping the heavy mud down the well, which has spewed as much as 184 million gallons.

At a news briefing Monday, the government's point man on the spill said several minor leaks have sprung near the blown-out well.

Engineers are working to repair the leaks, which aren't expected to delay the plugging effort, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said.

The only thing keeping oil from blowing into the Gulf at the moment is an experimental cap that has held for more than two weeks but was never meant to be permanent.
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plugged?

.....
 
Jamshyd said:
Obviously, this operation would shut off an oil well. That's the last thing they want. They first tried everything they could in order to make the well reusable. Assuming this works, the well COULD have been capped several months ago.
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I actually think it's cheaper for them to drill a new well.

The casing appears damaged in the existing well.
 
Jamshyd said:
Cheaper than what? I'm not talking about a hypothetical situation. They have already done a LOT in hopes of recovering lost oil.
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It's cheaper for them to permanently close the well and not have to deal with the PR mess, the lawsuits, the increased government regulation, the investigations, etc, and just drill a new well than to deal with a damaged well that's spewing oil into the Gulf.

If they felt otherwise, they could have kept the leaky cap on and recovered the oil/water mixture. They didn't have to try this new cap, which seems pretty effective at containing the spill. They could even use the argument (and probably successfully) that with the top kill attempt having failed, they are worried that the well is unable to deal with the pressure of a complete cap.
 
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38538861

BP said it began a critical test at its blown-out Gulf of Mexico oil well on Tuesday afternoon in advance of a "static kill" intended to help permanently eradicate the leak.

The test will will gauge ability to pump heavy drilling mud and cement into the ruptured well. Based on its results, the static kill could start later on Tuesday, the company said in a statement.


Getty Images
Transocean Offshore Installation Manager Chris Wokowsky stands on the deck of the Development Driller II, which is drilling a relief well, at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana.

The full magnitude of the Gulf of Mexico spill, triggered in April by a deadly rig explosion at the BP-owned deepwater well, became apparent Monday as government scientists released revised figures showing almost 5 million barrels of oil leaked before the well was temporarily capped on July 15.

This made it the world's largest accidental release of oil, surpassing the 1979 Ixtoc well blowout in Mexico's Bay of Campeche that gushed almost 3 million barrels.

Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who oversees the U.S. oil spill response, said engineers had succeeded in halting a hydraulic leak found on Monday in the cap that could have hindered the operation that will pump drilling mud, and possibly later cement, into the top of the well.

The static kill is the first step of a two-pronged strategy that will aim to finally seal the Macondo deposit later in August with more mud and cement injected through relief wells that will deliver a definitive "bottom kill.''

"This thing won't be truly sealed until those relief wells are done,'' Allen said.

The Macondo spill, already the worst in U.S. history, has unleashed an environmental and economic catastrophe on the U.S. Gulf Coast, disrupting the livelihoods of fishermen and tourism operators and triggering a barrage of damages lawsuits against BP. The company has said it will pay all legitimate claims and clean up fouled beaches and marshes.

The new leak estimates spelled further bad news for BP, which also faces an investigation by U.S. securities regulators into whether its employees profited illegally from the Gulf of Mexico spill. The revised flow numbers suggest the company had underestimated costs by at least $1 billion.

Insider Trading Probe

U.S. regulators are looking into potential insider trading in shares of BP [BP 39.939 0.519 (+1.32%)], including by BP employees, two sources familiar with the probe told Reuters on Monday.

BP had estimated the well had leaked some 4 million barrels of oil and that it would be fined $1,100 per barrel under the Clean Water Act.

The company faces fines of $4,300 per barrel if gross negligence is proven, but said it saw no need to change its provision as a result of the new estimate.

"Given these new figures, BP could be fined $4.5 billion if gross negligence is not proven, or up to $14 billion if it is,'' one dealer said.

BP, which took a $32.2 billion charge related to the spill in its results last week, has said it will sell $25 billion to $30 billion of assets to pay for the spill. Kuwait's oil minister said his state-owned Kuwait Petroleum International may be interested in buying some of the assets.

BP said Tuesday it had agreed to sell its Colombian oil unit to a consortium of Canada's Talisman Energy and Ecopetrol, Colombia's national oil company, for $1.9 billion.

BP shares initially fell around 1 percent in early trading Tuesday, but recovered, and were trading around .60 percent up later in the day.

BP's 10 percent partner in the well, Japan's Mitsui, has yet to decide if it will shoulder any costs, helping the trading house to report a 79 percent jump in profits to 102.5 billion yen ($1.18 billion).

BP's other partner in the well, Anadarko Petroleum [APC 53.29 0.02 (+0.04%)], which owns a 25 percent share, is due to report its second quarter results later Tuesday.

Meanwhile, other oilfield services and drilling companies were counting the cost to their profits and activities from a U.S. drilling moratorium, and permit delays, following the BP spill.

The Flow Rate Technical Group and a team of government scientists said that of the 4.9 million barrels of oil released by the well, BP had siphoned only about 16 percent to surface vessels, while the rest went into the sea.

The group's previous leak estimate ranged from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.

With the peak of the annual hurricane season approaching, authorities are worried that tropical storms could disrupt the well-kill and cleanup operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tropical Storm Colin formed in the central Atlantic Ocean early Tuesday, but most computer weather models show the system tracking northwest toward Bermuda, and not toward key oil and gas production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.

Making up for Losses

BP said it has created a special team to speed up payments to businesses that have submitted claims in the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill.

BP said in a news release Tuesday that change and others are designed to reduce paperwork and expedite payments to "businesspeople who are suffering."

BP said it processed about 2,600 business claims in the past three days totaling $9 million.

BP is encouraging businesses that need cash urgently to contact their adjuster or BP so the claim can be referred to the Immediate Action Claims Team. Decisions on whether to award payments will still be made judging by
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BP on Wednesday said its “static kill” operation to stem the leak at its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico appeared to have succeeded, a step the UK energy group described as a “significant milestone”.

The “static kill” – which involved pumping heavy drilling “mud” from the top of the well slowly down, pushing the oil back down into the reservoir – began on Tuesday and was stopped after about eight hours of pumping, BP [BP-LN 411.40 -4.25 (-1.02%)] [BP 40.00 --- UNCH ] said in a statement.
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http://www.cnbc.com/id/38552070
 
so is that it?

i was thinking this thread would break 1K posts

which is awesome/sad

eta: i'm still pretty impressed. other message boards i belong to with oil spill threads don't even make it to 5 pages.

Drug Users : We care about The Planet

eta: okay, so next stop is = what happens to all the dispersant that was pumped in? and the clean up of Louisana's beaches?
 
Kenickie said:
eta: okay, so next stop is = what happens to all the dispersant that was pumped in? and the clean up of Louisana's beaches?
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It's... dispersed. A report was released yesterday estimating that 75% of the spilled oil is already gone, either skimmed by ships, evaporated, or dispersed. Clean-up workers have been working non-stop since the spill and have kept beaches pretty clean. Now that there isn't really any oil on the surfaces, there shouldn't be much washing up on shores anymore. This hurricane season will churn the waters and spread it across the sea.
 
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