BP's `Kill' Start May Be Delayed Due to Storm Debris
Admiral Thad Allen
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Admiral Thad Allen, U.S. Coast Guard National Incident Commander, speaks to the media in the briefing room of the White House in Washington.
Admiral Thad Allen, U.S. Coast Guard National Incident Commander, speaks to the media in the briefing room of the White House in Washington. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
BP Plc’s next attempt to more fully seal its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico may be delayed by a day so the company can remove debris from a relief well.
The “static kill” procedure, in which mud and cement will be pumped into the well, may start Aug. 3, National Incident Commander Thad Allen told reporters today on a call.
Tropical Storm Bonnie, which entered the Gulf on July 23, caused some of the sediment along the sidewalls of the relief wellbore to fall inside, Allen said. BP, based in London, is removing the debris today before running a well casing.
During the storm, BP was forced to evacuate drilling vessels from the spill site, 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast.
“This is something that often happens when you have been off of a hole for a period of time,” Kent Wells, BP senior vice president for exploration and production, said today during a conference call with reporters. “We don’t expect to have a lot of problems,” Wells said of the wellbore-cleaning process.
Macondo was shut with a stack of valves on July 15 after spewing oil into the Gulf for almost three months.
BP expects to start pumping mud into the top of the broken well Aug. 3, although that could happen late Aug. 2, Wells said. The company will start running casing in the relief well tomorrow and start cementing it on Sunday, Wells said.
Permanent Plug Delayed
BP plans to permanently plug the well by the end of August, said Bob Dudley, who takes over as BP’s chief executive officer on Oct. 1. Dudley spoke today during a press conference in Biloxi, Mississippi.
BP initially planned to have the well permanently sealed by the middle of next month. The two-week delay is due to time lost during the tropical storm, Daren Beaudo, a company spokesman, said in a telephone interview today. Beaudo said cleaning the debris has set back the timing by an additional half a day.
If the static kill shows that the Macondo well is damaged, it can still be shut using a relief well to pump mud and cement through the bottom, Wells said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Katarzyna Klimasinska in Houston at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net Mark Chediak in San Francisco at mchediak@bloomberg.net.
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