Trying to cap it at this point with the relief well so close to completion doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. All I can think is that BP is attempting to reduce costs by not using the four rigs to suck up the oil.
That BOP looks a hell of a lot more out of plumb than the 3° they admit to.
The grit that has been coming up with the oil came from inside that well. There has to be one or more sand layers involved, so there have to be pockets along the shaft. The drilling log shows incidents of losing mud when they were drilling the sucker, and there is little doubt that pulling the mud out early condemned the cement job to failure. This is not a well for trying things on.
Like you say, just suck up the oil and wait for the relief well.
]]>The test, BTW, consists of implanting sensors over a large swathe of sea bed (and under it at varying depths) then setting off explosives in various places. By seeing how the sound waves propagate, they can then get an idea of what the subsurface looks like. But it’s a process that works best if there are as few sources of extraneous noise as possible in the environment.
Worry about the integrity of the well has been a constant amongst the oil patch types ever since it was noticed that the BOP was leaning. I frankly was surprised that BP proposed closing in the well at all given the risk of a disastrous blowout. I suppose the notion was that if a hurricane comes into the area, closing in the well wouldn’t make the situation worse than just leaving it open. But really, why even chance it until you have to? Just hook up the hoses to the thing and start sucking oil, already…
– Badtux the Oil Penguin
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