Re: Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster- Update on BP's attempt to stop the oil leaks
Re: Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster- Update on BP's attempt to stop the oil leaks
BP Uses ?Junk Shot,? Calls Oil Spill a ?Catastrophe? (Update1)
By Jessica Resnick-Ault
May 28 (Bloomberg) --
BP Plc added rubber golf balls and scraps to the mud it was pumping into its leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well in an effort to stop the spill, which Chief Executive Officer
Tony Hayward called an ?environmental catastrophe.?
The company restarted its effort to block the well with mud in a procedure known as ?top kill? at 7 p.m. New York time yesterday, said U.S. Coast Guard Chief
Bob Laura. The attempt began May 26 and was suspended the same day at 11 p.m. for adjustments, including use of rubber material already on hand in case BP tried a separate procedure called a ?junk shot.?
BP said in a statement today that it has spent $930 million responding to the spill, which began after an April 20 rig explosion that killed 11 workers.
The well has been spewing an estimated 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf, a U.S. government panel said yesterday. The midpoint of that estimate would make it the nation?s largest oil spill on record and more than twice as big as the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
?This is clearly an environmental catastrophe,? Hayward said today in a CNN television interview. He also called the situation ?a very significant environmental crisis? and said
BP is pumping ?loss-control? material into the so-called blowout preventer atop the well to stanch the flow of oil.
Today?s comments came two weeks after Hayward was quoted by The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. as saying the spill was ?relatively tiny? compared with the ?very big ocean.? Louisiana Governor
Bobby Jindal said May 26 that the spill had polluted 100 miles (161 kilometers) of his state?s coastline.
Junk Shot
The giant oil slick in the Gulf threatens the region?s fishing and tourism industries. The amount of oil being spilled will help determine BP?s liability for the leak, according to U.S. Coast Guard Admiral
Thad Allen.
BP added the junk-shot materials after pumping mud alone into the well for 11 hours Wednesday. The company previously said it would add the rubber pieces if needed.
BP opted to add the material to block leaks in the well,
Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for the London-based company?s exploration and production business, said at a press conference yesterday in Robert, Louisiana. Some of the junk-shot pieces are fibrous and small, and others are larger rubber balls, he said.
The mud alone may not have been sufficient to hold back the oil, said
Pedro Alvarez, chairman of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Rice University in Houston.
?Oil Bubbling Up?
?It became fluidized in a way, like quicksand,? Alvarez said today in a telephone interview. ?When you have the oil bubbling up from this gorge, the oil coming up pushed the mud out.? The rubber materials may allow the mud to set completely enough for BP to cap the well with concrete, he said.
The first phase of the top-kill effort used less than 15,000 barrels of drilling mud, Suttles said.
BP had 50,000 barrels available and has made sure there are additional supplies on hand for when pumping resumes, he said.
The 19-hour pause in injecting material in the well may have allowed
BP to evaluate whether the mud would stop the flow of oil completely enough to allow the company to add concrete, Alvarez said. ?I don?t see it as something really weird, necessarily,? he said.
Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of Professional Geoscience Programs at the University of Houston, said he sees
BP?s chances of success with top kill at 60 percent to 70 percent.
Outlook Dims?
?If they hadn?t had to do the junk shot, I would have thought the things are working really well, but the fact that they?ve done this junk shot suggests that they decided that they needed to do something a little bit extra to do it more effective,? Nieuwenhuise said in a telephone interview.
BP spokesman David Nicholas declined to comment this afternoon on progress with the top-kill effort. Tad Patzek, chairman of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin, said that based on a live video feed as of 2 p.m. New York time, ?it?s not going well.?
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