BP Delays Test of Leaking Gulf Well Until U.S. Approves
Oil gushes from a valve atop the failed blowout preventer at the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill site in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana Source: BP Plc via Bloomberg
BP Plc delayed testing on its latest effort to stop the largest U.S. oil spill in history after the Obama administration ordered further study of the plan to seal a well that’s been spewing crude into the ocean since April.
Industry and government scientists will meet at midday to devise procedures for a pressure test that will be done once the company stops the flow of oil with a 40-foot (12-meter) valve stack secured to the well July 12, BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells told reporters today on a conference call. The test will determine whether the cap can remain in place without causing the Gulf of Mexico well to burst open elsewhere.
The delay came after Energy Secretary Steven Chu and a team of experts said more analysis was needed, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said in a statement last night. The test aims to determine if the Macondo well can be safely shut before BP is ready to plug it permanently with cement. BP said the delay pushed back the schedule for a relief well it’s drilling to plug Macondo by a day or two.
“What we don’t want to do is move forward with a test that ends up with inconclusive results,” Wells said. “We just need to make sure there’s absolute clarity that this is the right test, that this will give us the most information, that this will minimize the risk.”
Macondo has been leaking as much as 60,000 barrels of oil a day, according to a government estimate, after an April 20 drilling-rig explosion that killed 11 workers. London-based BP planned to begin the pressure test July 12 or yesterday.
‘Remote Risk’
Improper test procedures pose a “remote risk” of cracking the well casing and causing oil and natural gas to erupt from the seabed, Wells said. He said a successful test could help guide the well-plugging procedure.
Drilling of the first of two relief wells, now about 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) from Macondo’s leaking bore, was suspended for the pressure test as a precaution, Wells said.
“There are too many cooks in the kitchen,” said David Pursell, an analyst at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. in Houston and a former petroleum engineer who conducted pressure tests. “Everybody in this process has said the single and best chance of stopping this flow is the relief well, and now they’ve held up the relief well while they’re figuring out protocol.”
BP fell as much as 4.7 percent in London trading after rallying for two days on optimism that the company was close to ending the spill.
Pressure Test
The disaster at one point wiped out more than half of BP’s stock value, forced the company to suspend its dividend, halted deep-water drilling in the U.S. and closed as much as 37 percent of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing as the oil spread. BP has spent more than $3.5 billion responding to the spill.
Once the test begins, BP may need 48 hours of data to declare the well safe to seal, Wells said. Experts may know within six hours if the wellbore is leaking and can’t be sealed, he said.
“If all of a sudden, they have a pressure drop, they’re going to open that thing wide up and leave it alone,” Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of Petroleum Geoscience Programs at the University of Houston, said yesterday in an interview. “A quick drop means a leak closer to the seabed, where oil and gas might work their way to the surface.”
The new cap has pressure-monitoring equipment that wasn’t available in May, when BP and the government abandoned efforts to seal Macondo from above. Without that equipment, operators wouldn’t know if shutting the valves forced oil and gas to rupture the well elsewhere, the company said earlier this week.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jim Polson in New York at jpolson@bloomberg.net; Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York at jresnickault@bloomberg.net.
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