'Top Kill' Fails to Plug Leak; BP Readies Next Approach

When is BP actually going to start asking other oil companies for help or taking their advice? This 'Top Kill' approach was not recommended by some people in the oil industry as they thought the mud would come back almost immediately which is what happened. A BP technician tells the truth which is bolded in the article.

BP management has not been telling the truth from day one and when it came out in the hearings they had not used 'o' rings on a well oil people started suspecting this was more of the cutting corners BP is famous for in the operation. BP getting a safety award must have cost them big bucks. The idea that they changed procedures two days before the explosion defies belief and then didn't the necessary testing before removing the mud should see people sent to the prison.

The BP's spokesman has the nerve to say how many people they have on the beaches cleaning up when we learned the 400 yesterday were bused in for the Obama photo op and as soon as he left, they were bused back out.

BP estimates it has nearly 2,000 workers already along the coast, according to David Nicholas, a BP spokesman. Mr. Suttles said the company was somewhat hampered in its efforts to be aggressive by the delicate nature of the ecosystem. “We don’t want to create more harm in doing the cleanup than the oil creates on its own,” he said.

Would bet Grand Isle and other places along the Louisiana Gulf would love to be seeing these 2,000 people BP claims they have working. At most 10-20 show up occasionally on the beach. Why not hire workers who have been laid off because of BP?

When is BP going to tell the truth? In fact, when is Obama going to tell the truth? They knew almost right away that pumping mud was not working as it was coming back at them but yet kept telling people they were continuing to pump when they were not -- in fact the CEO of BP said there was a 60-70% chance 'Top Kill' would work when most in the industry were convinced there was a slim to none chance it would work. Then BP tried the junk shots which they knew didn't work almost immediately. Yet it took them until this afternoon to admit it had all failed. Guess Obama's trip to the Gulf was useless because BP is still in charge of the operation.

Where is the Navy that is more equipped to handle this then the Coast Guard? Guess the Navy doesn't fit the Obama agenda of wanting the US to be dependent on foreign oil just like he has suspended drilling for six months for company with little to no safety problems or problems with their offshore drilling. Guess Obama would like to bankrupt the oil producing states which are RED States!

'Top Kill’ Fails to Plug Leak; BP Readies Next ApproachBy LESLIE KAUFMAN, CLIFFORD KRAUSS and SARAH WHEATON

NEW ORLEANS — BP engineers said Saturday that the “top kill” effort to stem the flow of oil gushing from a well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico had failed and, after consultation with government officials, they had decided to move on to another strategy.

The announcement marked the latest setback in the attempt to plug the spill that is polluting gulf waters at an estimated rate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day. It is already the largest spill in American history.

“This scares everybody, the fact that we can’t make this well stop flowing, or the fact that we haven’t succeeded so far,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said Saturday at a news conference in Robert, La.
The more immediate focus is now on containing the flow, rather than stopping it.

Mr. Suttles said the next step would be called a “lower marine riser package cap” and involves smoothly cutting the riser that the oil is leaking from and placing a device atop it to capture the escaping oil. Equipment has already been deployed on land and on the sea bed, he said, but it could take four to seven days to deploy.
“
We have made the decision to move on to the next option,” Mr. Suttles said. “Repeated pumping, we don’t believe, will likely achieve success.”

The failure of the top kill procedure, which was thought to be the company’s best option for stopping the leak, was announced after about 30,000 barrels of mud was injected into the well and three attempts were made at what is termed the “junk shot,” a procedure that involves pumping odds and ends like plastic cubes, knotted rope, and golf balls into the blowout preventer, the five-story safety device atop the well.

A technician who has been working on the project to stem the oil leak said Saturday that neither the top kill nor an earlier effort known as the “junk shot” came close to succeeding because the pressure of oil and gas escaping from the well was simply too powerful to overcome. He added that engineers never had a complete enough understanding of the inner workings of drill pipe casing or blowout preventer rams to make the efforts work.

“Simply too much of what we pumped in was escaping,” said the technician, who spoke on condition of remaining unnamed since he is not authorized to speak publicly for the company.

“The engineers are disappointed and management is upset,” said the technician. “Nothing is good, nothing is good.”

As BP continues to devise techniques to actually stop the leak, “the next thing to do is try to capture all of the flow or as much of the flow as we can,” Mr. Suttles said.

“This operation should be able to capture most of the oil,” he said, cautioning that some could leak out around the cap.

“We’re confident the job will work, but obviously we cannot guarantee success at this time,” Mr. Suttles said, adding that the technique had never been tried before.
Officials said it would take four to seven days to determine if the capping effort is successful.

The cap draws on lessons from an earlier effort to place a containment dome over the flow. That method failed after hydrate crystals formed around its opening. This time, an additional pipe will pump hot water to try to prevent the hydrates, which form when gas mixes with water at low temperatures and high pressure.

Work is continuing on drilling a relief well, the option experts say would most reliably put an end to the catastrophe. BP is “ahead of our plan right now,” Mr. Suttles said, though “the farther we go, the harder it gets.” He estimated the relief well would be completed in early August.

“People want to know which technique is going to work, and I don’t know. It hasn’t been done at these depths and that’s why we’ve had multiple options working parallel.”

Mr. Suttles also used the news conference Saturday afternoon to defend BP’s cleanup efforts, which have come under fierce criticism from local politicians for being too little, too late.

(snip)

Leslie Kaufman reported from New Orleans, Clifford Krauss from Houston and Sarah Wheaton from New York.

Excerpt: Read more at NY Times