Let It Flow

The oil is flowing freely out of the Well from Hell as BP has removed their current jury-rigged cap and is unbolting the top of the blow-out preventer to attach a “new and improved” version that is supposed to carry all of the oil up to waiting vessels at the surface.

McClatchy reports on this development – Is it almost over? BP will try to stop oil flow next week

WASHINGTON — In a dramatic turn of events, the Obama administration has given BP the go-ahead to remove the containment cap atop the runaway Deepwater Horizon oil well and replace it with a tighter fitting one in an attempt to stop all the oil now flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps as soon as the middle of next week.

If successful, no oil would gush into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since soon after the Deepwater Horizon exploded in flames on April 20.

Thad Allen, the Obama administration’s point man on the oil spill, said Friday that the current containment cap will be removed on Saturday and that installation of the new one would begin three or four days later.

This would probably have worked it it had been done immediately, but it is highly probable that oil is exiting the shaft to the same layers that caused problems during the drilling, and have allowed mud to escape when they tried “top kill”.

BP still hasn’t explained what the second pipe is doing inside the riser, and where it came from. Some have said that it is a section of the drilling pipe that dropped down when the Deepwater Horizon sank and broke the plumbing to the surface, but others suspect that it was casing that was pushed up from down in the well shaft. The ROVs have to tie the two pipes together so the new cap can be lowered in place.