BP: ‘Static kill’ might do the trick alone

After insisting for months that a pair of costly relief wells were the only surefire way to kill the oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, BP officials said Monday they may be able to do it just with lines running from a ship to the blown-out well a mile below.

As crews planned testing to determine whether to proceed with a ‘static kill’ to pump mud and perhaps cement down the throat of the well, BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said if it’s successful the relief wells may not be needed, after all, to do the same weeks later from the bottom.

BP said on Monday that a crucial test ahead of its planned would be delayed due to a leak and the kill operation will now ‘possibly’ happen on Tuesday.

“During final preparations to commence with the injectivity test, a small hydraulic leak was discovered in the capping stack hydraulic control system,” BP said. “The injectivity test, previously announced to take place today, will be rescheduled until the leak is repaired.”

The primary relief well, near completion, will still be finished and could be used simply to ensure the leak is plugged, Wells said.

“Even if we were to pump the cement from the top, we will still continue on with the relief well and confirm that the well is dead,” he said. Either way, “we want to end up with cement in the bottom of the hole.”

Government officials and company executives have long said the wells, which can cost about $100 million each, may be the only way to make certain the oil is contained to its vast undersea reservoir. A federal task force says about 172 million gallons of oil made it into the Gulf between April and mid-July, when a temporary cap bottled up all the oil.

That number is on the high end of recent estimates that anywhere from 92 million to 184 million gallons had gushed into the sea.

The federal task force says about 206 million gallons total gushed out of the mile-deep well between the April 20 rig explosion that triggered the spill and July 15, when engineers placed a temporary cap on the leaking well. The fleet of boats and other efforts were able to contain more than 33 million gallons.

The company began drilling the primary, 18,000-foot relief well May 2, 12 days after the Deepwater Horizon rig blast killed 11 workers, and a second backup well May 16. The first well is now only about 100 feet from the target, and Wells said it could reach it as early as August 11.

“Precisely what the relief wells will do remains to be seen given what we learn from the static kill,” BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said. “Can’t predict it for certain.”

Retired Adm. Thad Allen, the Government’s point man on the spill response, said Monday that the focus now is on making sure the static kill is successful. But he cautioned that federal officials don’t see it as ‘the end all, be all until we get the relief well done.’

Condition of well unknown

One of the biggest variables is whether the area called the annulus, which is between the inner piping and the outer casing, has sprung an oil leak. Engineers probably won’t be able to answer that question until they drill in from the bottom, he said.

“Everyone would like to have this thing over as soon as possible,” Allen said, adding that they don’t know the condition of the well until the start pushing mud into it.

The company’s statements Monday might signal that it is more concerned than it has acknowledged about debris found in the relief well after it was briefly capped as Tropical Storm Bonnie passed last week, a Louisiana State University environmental sciences professor Ed Overton said. Plus, trying to seal the well from the top gives BP two shots at ending the disaster, Overton said.

msnbc.com