Feds: BP's cap stays on, new leaks insignificant

(Yeah, this sounds encouraging. It sounds like another bad decision made by idiots with no foresight--one we will all regret soon. I hope I'm wrong.--jef)

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Feds say oil and gas leaking from cap on BP's well of minor concern, focus instead on big fix
COLLEEN LONG and MATTHEW DALY | AP News | Jul 20, 2010 07:30 EDT

Oil from BP's blown out well is again seeping into the Gulf of Mexico, but this time, more slowly and scientists aren't convinced the cap that stopped the flow last week is making things worse.

The government said Monday that oil was seeping into the Gulf after days of warning that the experimental cap on the oil well could cause more leaks.

Despite what at first seemed a setback, though, the federal government declared the development insignificant and forged ahead with BP's plan for finally sealing the hole in the ocean floor.

Ever since the cap was used to bottle up the oil last week, engineers have been watching underwater cameras and monitoring pressure and seismic readings to see whether the well would hold or spring a new leak, perhaps one that could rupture the sea floor and make the disaster even worse.

Small amounts of oil and gas started coming from the cap late Sunday, but "we do not believe it is consequential at this time," retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said.

Also, seepage from the sea floor was detected over the weekend less than two miles away, but Allen said it probably has nothing to do with the well. Oil and gas are known to ooze naturally from fissures in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

At a Monday afternoon briefing in Washington, Allen said BP could keep the cap closed at least another 24 hours, as long as the company remained alert for leaks.

Since the cap was closed Thursday, beachgoers have reported less oil fouling the shore.

Bob Broadway, 41, of Huntsville, Ala., said his vacation spot in Orange Beach, Ala., has improved from a month ago.

Then, he said, the oil was thick "like chocolate" and the beach smelled like "an old mechanic's garage."

"The beach looks better now than before," he said Monday.

BP and the government had been at odds over the company's desire to simply leave the cap in place and employ it like a giant cork in a bottle until a relief well being drilled deep underground can be used to plug up the well permanently.

Allen initially said his preference was to pipe oil through the cap to tankers on the surface to reduce the slight chance that the buildup of pressure inside the well would cause a new blowout. That plan would require releasing millions more gallons of oil into the ocean for a few days during the transition — a spectacle BP apparently wants to avoid.

On Monday, Allen budged a bit, saying unless larger problems develop, he's not inclined to open the cap.

Also on the table: Pumping drilling mud through the top of the cap and into the well bore to stop up the oil flow. The idea is similar to the failed top kill plan that couldn't overcome the pressure of the geyser pushing up.

BP said it could work now because there's less oil to fight against, but it wasn't clear how such a method would affect the cap's stability. Allen said the relief well was still the plan for a permanent fix.

BP and the government are still trying to understand why pressure readings from the well are lower than expected. Allen offered two possible explanations: The reservoir the oil is gushing from is dwindling, or there is an undiscovered leak somewhere down in the well.

Work on a permanent plug is moving steadily, with crews drilling into the side of the ruptured well from deep underground. By next week, they could start blasting in mud and cement to block off the well for good. Killing the well deep underground works more reliably than bottling it up with a cap.

Somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons have gushed into the Gulf over the past three months in one of America's worst environmental crises.

BP PLC said the cost of dealing with the spill has now reached nearly $4 billion. The company said it has made payments totaling $207 million to settle claims for damages. Almost 116,000 claims have been submitted and more than 67,500 payments have been made. BP stock was down slightly Monday.

Expert suspects BP has ulterior motive behind oil well cap

By David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Since a blowout preventer cap was placed over BP's damaged oil well in the Gulf of Mexico last weekend, there have been repeated delays in the so-called "well integrity tests" to determine whether the cap can be effective in holding back the oil.

On Tuesday, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen delayed the tests for 24 hours out of fears that they would lead to "irreversible leakage" if it was found that the well bore had been damaged below the sea floor. After a White House review, BP was told on Wednesday that it could proceed with the test, but a leak in a line leading from the cap then forced an additional one-day delay for repairs.

Oil industry expert Bob Cavnar isn't buying the official story. He told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the repeated missteps cast doubt on BP's explanation for why the cap was necessary in the first place.

"I don't understand this whole operation," Cavnar stated. "Sunday was the first time I heard the words 'well integrity test.' There's never been any discussion about this in their public disclosure or in anything else that I've seen. ... So I'm completely confused as to why they're taking this risk of damaging the well further. ... They didn't have all these steps worked out."

"They shouldn't be doing this at all," he suggested. "They should be continuing with the relief well to get this thing killed."

Cavnar believes that BP's true goal is to make it harder to measure the flow of oil from the damaged well, because under the Clean Water Act, it will be liable for civil penalties of up to $4300 for every barrel spilled.

"While they have every incentive to get the well killed, BP also has every incentive to not capture 100% of the well flow until they do," Cavnar wrote last week at Huffington Post. "As soon as they do capture all the flow, then a real, measurable number will be in front of the public, and that's the last thing BP wants, since that number will then be used to extrapolate environmental damage, hence per barrel fines that will likely run to the tens of billions anyway."

"The whole [original] reason for this cap was to allow two more outlets to produce to four ships so they could capture between sixty and eighty thousand barrels a day," Cavnar told Olbermann "This whole business of shutting in -- and shutting down the relief well -- just doesn't make any sense to me at this point. ... My guess is that they're hoping to be able to shut down at least some of the production from the well so once they open it back up to the surface ... it will be producing at a rate less than what it was 'open flow.' So it'll be harder to measure what the total flow was from the well when it was completely uncontrolled."

This video is from MSNBC's Countdown, broadcast July 14, 2010.

The Cap is Off

Why That is Not a Disaster in Gulf Oil Spill
by: Mark Sappenfield | The Christian Science Monitor | Sunday 11 July 2010

For a live feed from the gushing well, scroll down to the bottom of this article.

When BP removed its leaking containment cap Saturday, more oil began pouring into the Gulf – about 15,000 barrels of oil a day added to the Gulf oil spill.

But as early as Sunday, BP will begin ramping up a system that could begin collecting nearly double that amount – even with the containment cap off.

This system is separate from the new “sealing cap” that engineers are now trying to fit atop the failed blowout preventer. As a result, even if BP runs into trouble as it attempts to put on the more robust sealing cap – as past experience suggest is possible – the company could still be collecting nearly 35,000 barrels (1.47 million gallons) of oil a day in the meantime.

It means that the removal of the cap might not significantly worsen oil-collection efforts – even in the short term.

In fact, this separate system could collect a majority of all the spewing oil even without the cap, according to one estimate. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the response effort, on June 18 said he thought the flow rate from the well was in the neighborhood of 35,000 barrels a day.

The ultimate solution – shutting off the flow of oil entirely by drilling a relief well – is currently slated for completion some time in August.

Introducing ... the Helix Producer

The new system set to come on line Sunday works independent of any cap because it involves a valve on the side of the blowout preventer called the “kill line.” A ship called the Helix Producer, which can process about 25,000 barrels a day, will connect to the kill line. BP is already using the kill line’s twin, the “choke line,” to siphon about 9,000 barrels of oil a day to a ship called the Q4000.

Even with the cap off, the Q4000 is collecting an average of 8,000 barrels of oil daily, said Kent Wells, BP’s senior vice president of exploration and production, on Saturday.

So when the Helix is operating at full capacity – which could take a few days – it and the Q4000 could bring collection capacity to nearly 35,000 barrels a day irrespective of the cap. With the old cap on, BP had been capturing roughly 26,000 barrels a day and interruptions of a day or more were common. A lightning strike and an accident with a robot both resulted in the collection of significantly less oil for a time.

Scientists have suggested that between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels of oil could be gushing from the wellhead daily.

Building a Better Cap

The ramping up of the Helix comes as BP is also trying to bolt a new and better fitting cap to the top of the blowout preventer.

The old cap, which was removed Saturday, was fitted atop the sawed-off stump of the riser pipe. Using remotely controlled robots, engineers will try to unbolt from the blowout preventer that stump of the riser pipe and in its place affix the new cap assembly, which weighs 100 tons and is 30 stories tall.

BP officials were hopeful that the cap could be in place as soon as Monday. If it works, the cap – along with the Helix and Q4000 – is expected to collect virtually all the oil leaking from the well, though trickles could still escape if the seal is not perfect.

With all these efforts set to succeed or fail in the next few days, this week is shaping up to be one of the most important since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank in late April. That’s partly because hurricane Alex is forcing BP’s hand.

Hurricane Alex's Impact

BP and the Coast Guard had wanted to space out these operations, bringing the Helix on line a week ago and then assessing the situation. It is possible that the Helix, Q4000, and old cap might have collected all the oil, making the new cap unnecessary.

But high waves from hurricane Alex delayed the deployment of the Helix and also showed how vulnerable to hurricanes the current collection system is. Even though the hurricane never approached the spill site, BP almost had to abandon its oil collection.

The pipes attached to the old cap were ill suited to weather storms. The new cap will include two flexible riser pipes, which will make it easier for ships to connect to them before and after a hurricane passes. Moreover, the new cap will have more oil-collection capacity.

With a week or more of clear weather forecast, BP and the Coast Guard are scrambling to try to get as many parts of new system as possible ready before another storm hits.

BP removes cap from Gulf oil gusher, hopes to resume collection in 4-7 days

By Agence France-Presse | Saturday, July 10th, 2010

Workers began Saturday directing underwater robots to replace the cap on a gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico, in a bid to finally contain the devastating oil flow.

Live video feed of the spill site showed remotely-controlled submarines maneuvering the cap system in order to remove the old containment cap and place a tighter one.

If all works as planned, the new cap combined with a series of tankers that on the surface could contain all the oil now soiling the Gulf's fragile coastlines as early as Monday.

But the new system, expected to take four to seven days to be operational, is only a temporary solution before relief wells are completed that could stop the flow completely -- and comes after repeated failures and setbacks for BP as it wrangles with the worstenvironmental disaster in US history.

Once the old cap is removed, oil will flow unabated into the Gulf waters for some 48 hours, and the new system's success is anything but guaranteed.

"This new sealing cap has not been deployed at these depths or under these conditions, and there can be no assurance that the sealing cap will be successfully installed or installed within the anticipated timeframe," BP warned in a statement.

BP senior vice president Kent Wells said other options remained at the ready, including a new "top hat" containment system, if necessary.

"We always have backups for our backups," he told reporters, noting that workers were also ramping up skimming activity to collect as much oil as spill site during recapping period.

Engineers nearly a mile (1,600 meters) above on the surface were manipulating the undersea robots, rushing to take advantage of about a week of expected favorable weather conditions in the spill area for the new operation.

The existing cap, which sucks up to 25,000 barrels (one million gallons) of oil a day, was installed over a month ago but it allowed some of the hydrocarbons to escape because it was loosely fitted over a jagged cut of the well pipe.

BP is also working to connect the Helix Producer containment ship to another portion of the blown-out well. The ship should be up and running by Sunday, officials said.

Government estimates for the disastrous spill unleashed when the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank nearly three months ago, range between 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil (1.5 million to 2.5 million gallons) spewing into Gulf waters each day, based on interpretation of a live video feed of the leak.

The new cap and containment ship will raise containment capacity to 60,000 to 80,000 barrels (2.5 million to 3.4 million gallons) a day -- in effect halting spill that has imperiled wildlife and people's livelihoods across the Gulf Coast, according to officials.

An estimated 2.9 to 4.9 million barrels of oil have gushed into the Gulf waters since the spill began, and on day 82 of the spill, only 755,900 barrels have been recovered.

The government's pointman on the spill, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, said on Friday he had approved the latest plans because they will provide for "far greater" containment capacity than current systems.

But no permanent solution is expected until the first of two relief wells is completed in order to inject drilling fluids into the gushing well and then seal it for good with cement.

The first relief well is expected to intersect the busted well by the end of July but it will take days or weeks -- until about mid-August -- to plug the leak, Wells said.

BP's backup plans include stationing nearly 400 boats between the Deepwater Horizon site and the Gulf Coast and more than 50 aircraft to spot and scoop up the additional oil that would flow into the Gulf.

In Pass Christian, Mississippi, cleanup crews in yellow reflective vests fanned out across the white sand beach, scooping tar balls from the water's edge with shovels and rakes under a punishing sun.

"It's a travesty," said Michael Howson, 48, who left his home in Chicago six weeks ago to work as a safety supervisor with the crew.

He's seen dead porpoises, turtles, pelicans, crabs, sea turtles and patches of oil as big as a car wash up on the beach.

"It's terrible they haven't been able to cap it yet," he told AFP. "It's destroying the beaches, it's destroying the wildlife and it's destroying the people."

Oil has now washed up on beaches in all five Gulf states -- Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida -- forcing the closure of fishing grounds and threatening scores of coastal communities with financial ruin.

Robots succeed, cut well pipe; More oil gushes into Gulf

(If I'm in charge of this clusterfuck, this is the first thing I try on Day 1, not the 5th or 6th thing 43 days into the worst environmental disaster in history. I hope it works, at least it's a sound concept.--jef)

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Robots succeed, cut well pipe; More oil gushes into Gulf
By the CNN Wire Staff
June 2, 2010

(CNN) -- A new flow of oil emerged from BP's damaged undersea well in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday evening after a remote-controlled submarine successfully cut into the well's riser pipe.

BP used robots in its latest attempt to curtail the flow of crude from the largest spill in U.S. history, which spread to barrier islands off Alabama and Mississippi on Tuesday.

When the robot submarines cut into the undersea well's riser pipe, a fresh spew of oil temporarily obscured the view of the mechanical arm. The cut was a first step toward placing a cap over the well that has spewed hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day since late April.

BP expects to make more cuts to the riser before bringing in a diamond saw to make a clean cut where the cap will be fitted. Doug Suttles, the company's chief operating officer, told CNN's "John King USA" that the procedure should collect the "vast majority" of the oil if it succeeds.

"We'll be putting the cap assembly, loading that out and sending it to the sea bed later tonight," Suttles said. "We should be able to install this tomorrow. And hopefully by late tomorrow or Thursday, we should have this thing operating."

But the operation carries the risk that the flow of crude from the ruptured well could increase by up to 20 percent once the damaged riser is cut away. The job already has been complicated by pipework around the well that has had to be removed before massive metal shears could be brought to bear Tuesday evening, Suttles said. The gusher may not be shut down until August, when BP expects to complete relief wells that will take the pressure off the one now spewing into the Gulf.

The 5,000-foot-deep well erupted after an explosion and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20. The rig sank two days later, taking 11 men with it and leaving up to 19,000 barrels (798,000 gallons) of oil pouring into the Gulf, according to federal estimates.

After fouling sections of Louisiana's marshes over the past two weeks, the oil was spreading toward the northeast on Tuesday. Tar balls and patches of reddish-brown "weathered" oil came ashore on Dauphin Island, Alabama, south of Mobile, and on Mississippi's Petit Bois Island, off Pascagoula, authorities reported.

Oil hits Alabama, Mississippi barrier islands

More than a dozen miles offshore, researchers from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab reported seeing more rust-colored swaths of oil spattering the surface of the Gulf. They ranged from the size of half-dollar coins to 30 or 40 feet long, said John Dindo, the laboratory's associate director.

BP's handling of the spill has been sharply criticized by members of Congress, officials in the Gulf states and the Obama administration, which announced Tuesday that a criminal investigation of the spill was under way. In addition, federal officials will no longer hold joint news briefings with the company, the administration announced.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the spill, will now become the face of the response effort. Allen told reporters in New Orleans, Louisiana, that his job is to speak "very frankly with the American public."

Rear Adm. Mary Landry, who has been the Coast Guard's on-scene coordinator for five weeks, will be returning to her duties as chief of the service's New Orleans district office. Allen praised Landry's work leading "an anomalous and unprecedented response" to the spill, but said Landry now needs to focus "on the larger array of threats" to her district -- including this summer's Atlantic hurricane season, which began Tuesday.

In Louisiana, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser warned that a hurricane in the area could drive more oil ashore.

"We don't want to scare anybody, but we need to be realistic about it," Nungesser said. "If a storm does top out levees, it will probably bring oil with it." He said residents who evacuate ahead of a hurricane might return "not to a flooded home, but to a home that is completely contaminated with this oil."

Oil spill darkens hurricane fears

Tuesday also marked the start of the recreational fishing season for red snapper, a big draw for sport anglers in the region. But the season opened with a new blow to the region's fisheries industry as the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration extended its restrictions on fishing to almost a third of the Gulf.

The closures extend southward to a point about 240 miles west of the tip of Florida and eastward to federal waters off the Alabama-Florida state line.

The state of Mississippi announced a closure of some of its inland waterways to fishing after oil was found in the area. The closed area includes areas east of 88 degrees, 40 minutes west longitude, and south of the CSX Railroad, but not including Graveline Bayou and its tributaries.

After a meeting with state attorneys general and federal prosecutors from Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that the Justice Department was looking at possible criminal violations in connection with the spill.

Justice Department launches investigation

"If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be forceful in our response," Holder said. "We have already instructed all relevant parties to preserve any documents that may shed light on the facts surrounding this disaster."

In a statement issued in response to Holder's announcement, BP said it would cooperate with any inquiry, "just as we are doing in response to the other inquires that are already ongoing." Suttles told CNN that there have been "very few differences" between company and federal officials working to cut off the spill.

"This is a team that's really all aligned on the same goals and has been since the beginning," he said. "The government clearly presses us very hard to make sure we're responding as quick as we can. We're moving things forward, we're applying all the resources that we need to apply. But I would stress at the working level, those differences are really quite small."

BP, rig owner Transocean Ltd. and oilfield services company Halliburton have blamed each other for the disaster. But BP, as the well's owner, is responsible for the costs of the cleanup under federal law, and Suttles said the company has now spent more than $1 billion to clean up the oil.

BP stock has taken a beating on Wall Street , plunging on Tuesday after the failure of last week's "top kill" attempt to close the well. The company's stock value is down more than a third since the spill began.