subject: BP's Top Kill Effort Fails To Save Gulf Oil Leak [print this page] BP's Top Kill Effort Fails To Save Gulf Oil Leak
BP admitted defeat Saturday in its try to plug the Gulf of Mexico oil leak by pumping mud in to a busted well, but is readying yet another approach after repeated failures to cease the crude that's fouling marshland and beaches.
BP PLC Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said the company determined the "top kill" had failed after it spent four days pumping heavy drilling mud in to the crippled well 5,000 feet underwater. Over 1.2 million gallons of mud was used, but most of it escaped out of the damaged riser.
In the four weeks since the spill began, the company has failed in each try to cease the gusher, as estimates of how much oil is leaking grow more dire. The spill is the worst in U.S. history exceeding even the 1989 Exxon Valdez catastrophe and dumping between 18 million and 40 million gallons in to the Gulf, according to government estimates.
"This scares everybody, the fact that they can't make this well cease flowing, the fact that they haven't succeeded so far," Suttles said. "Many of the things we're trying have been completed on the surface before, but have never been tried at 5,000 feet."
The company failed in the days after the spill to make use of robot submarines to close valves on the huge blowout preventer atop the damaged well, then four weeks later ice-like crystals clogged a 100-ton box the company tried placing over the leak. Earlier this week, engineers removed a mile-long siphon tube after it sucked up a disappointing 900,000 gallons of oil from the gusher.
Frustration has grown as drifting oil closes beaches and washes up in sensitive marshland. The destroy is underscored by images of pelicans and their eggs coated in oil. Below the surface, oyster beds and shrimp nurseries face definite death.
President Barack Obama visited the coast Friday to see the destroy as they tried to emphasize that his administration was in control of the crisis. They told people in Grand Isle, where the beach has been closed by gobs of oil, that they wouldn't be abandoned.
After BP announced the top kill failure, Obama said from Chicago that the continued flow of oil in to the Gulf is "as enraging as it is heartbreaking."
Suttles said BP is already preparing for the next try to cease the leak that began after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in April, killing 11 people.
The company designs to make use of robot submarines to cut off the damaged riser from which the oil is leaking, and then try to cap it with a containment valve. The hard work is expected to take between four and six days.
"We're confident the job will work but obviously they can't guarantee success," Suttles said of the new plan, declining to handicap the likelihood it will work.
They said that cutting off the damaged riser isn't expected to cause the flow rate of leaking oil to increase significantly.
The permanent solution to the leak, a relief well currently being drilled, won't be prepared until August, BP says.
Specialists have said that a bend in the damaged riser likely was restricting the flow of oil , so slicing it off and installing a brand new containment valve is dicy.
"If they can't get that valve on, things will get much worse," said Philip W. Johnson, an engineering professor at the University of Alabama.
Johnson said they thinks BP can succeed with the valve, but added: "It's a scary proposition."
Word that the top-kill had failed hit hard in fishing communities along Louisiana's coast.
"Everybody's beginning to recognize this summer's lost. And our whole lifestyle might be lost," said Michael Ballay, the 59-year-old manager of the Cypress Cove Marina in Venice, La., near where oil first made landfall in huge quanities very four weeks ago.
Johnny Nunez, owner of Fishing Magician Charters in Shell Beach, La., said the spill is hurting his business in the coursework of what's normally the best time of year and there's no finish in sight.
"If fishing's bad for four years, I'll be 60 years elderly. I'll be completed for," they said after watching BP's televised announcement.
For more information please visit:http://hotlane.info
