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| Exec says BP could plug well by end of July |
| 2010-07-04 |
| BP could plug its gushing Gulf oil well by the end of July, ahead of a projected target of August, if weather conditions permit and the drilling of relief wells keeps going smoothly, the newly appointed executive in charge of the company's response said Friday. "We are ahead of schedule, but all it takes is one storm, and we have to move off of station," Bob Dudley, CEO of BP's newly created Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. "I think it's not unreasonable to think one of those might happen, and then we're into August again. That's why August is probably a higher probability." Still, even the hint of an earlier-than-expected capping of BP's Macondo well comes as a rare bit of good news to a national crisis in dire need of it -- and Dudley's job is to make sure there's more such news to come. In the nearly two weeks since he took over responsibility for the spill from embattled BP CEO Tony Hayward, Dudley has moved swiftly to improve the British oil giant's handling of all aspects of the Gulf disaster, from trying to speed up payment of claims to out-of-work fisherman to making sure the requests of local Gulf officials are being heard. "I am from the U.S. I grew up on the Gulf Coast. I've got a passion for it, and I think people saw that. I hope I can help," said Dudley, sitting in a small conference room at BP's sprawling office complex in west Houston. Dudley, a board member and former head of BP's joint venture in Russia, TNK-BP, had been selected for the job early in the crisis. An engineer with 30 years experience in the oil and gas industry, who grew up in Hattiesburg, Miss., he seemed a perfect fit. And he was supposed to take over once the well was capped. But on June 23, BP announced Dudley was stepping in immediately and Hayward would return to London - fueling speculation that Hayward is on his way out and Dudley could be the next CEO. |
| Posted by:Fred |
#5
It is my understanding that there is a lot of cementing work going on to ensure that the new well doesn't suffer the same fate as the original one. They are allowing that cement to fully cure before attempting to intersect the current well. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2010-07-04 16:25 |
| #4 Gathering Tritum to replenish the B-66. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2010-07-04 13:56 |
| #3 Things may not be bad enough that they'd be allowed to solve the problem. It's an economically important formation that in the long term is still usable. I suspect they're waiting for a sequence of events that will allow them to do something extreme that will wreck the ability to use the formation. Remember BP isn't really in charge any more; the government is. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2010-07-04 11:31 |
| #2 I can't find much detailed information on what their plan is. Seems like they could try to drill into the wild well and kill it today (they are only about 50 feet away), but for some reason are not. Maybe they are running another string of casing in the relief well before going closer (I would.) Maybe they are waiting until they change the wild well riser connection so they can increase back pressure while they try to kill with the relief well - would suggest a lack of confidence in the standard relief well system, and thus some negative information we have not been given.) Or maybe they will wait for both the wild well connection change AND for the second relief well to catch up before trying. Wish we were being given more information. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2010-07-04 10:55 |
| #1 The sooner the better. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2010-07-04 01:20 |