BP Procedure Meant to Permanently Seal Well Is Set to Begin

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"Sometime late on Monday or early on Tuesday, BP expects to begin the procedure called a static kill that may finally seal its volatile oil well in the Gulf of Mexico for good.

Engineers for the company are preparing to pump heavy drilling mud and then cement into the Macondo well, which gushed crude into the gulf for months after a rig accident in April. A temporary cap managed to stop the flow in mid-July while BP pressed ahead with work to kill the well permanently — or at least learn critical clues about any unknown leaks that still have to be plugged.

The effort, known as a static kill, comes just over 100 days after the well blew out, spewing as much as five million barrels of oil into the gulf in the largest oil spill ever in American waters. Attempts to control the well have been marked by repeated failures and disappointments, but officials have become increasingly buoyant in their public comments in the last two weeks, since technicians managed to install a tight-fitting cap on the well.

“We are optimistic that we will get this thing done,” Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is leading the federal response to the spill, said last week while discussing the final preparations for the plugging operations."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/us/03spill.html?src=mv

[SidDithers]

1. Good news...

:thumbsup:

Sid

[Scurrilous]

5. Indeed.

:thumbsup:

[Subdivisions]

2. Here's hoping they succeed... n/t

[Edweird]

3. Good.

[MineralMan]

4. Fingers crossed.

[DCBob]

6. Hope it works but it still sounds a bit risky.. its possible as soon as the pressure starts rising..

the new cap could blow. Hope not but its something that needs to be considered.