You know, I’m going to miss these almost daily updates of well-capping procedures performed by robots 5,000 ft. under the surface of the Gulf of Mex…
No, I’m not. If I never hear another piece of vaguely violent drilling jargon—top kill, bottom kill, static kill—it will be too soon. It’s gotten to the point where I’m hearing retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen’s monotone narrating my dreams, all of which seem to involve pressure tests.
But I’m here to see this through the bitter end—or least until Saturday, when I head to Florida. And it looks like the end may be close. After announcing yesterday that the final stages of drilling the relief well—now within a few feet of intersecting the original well—had to be suspended for a few days because of a potential tropical storm developing in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, it looks now like the weather is dissipating. That means the relief well operations that had been suspended should be able to recommence fairly soon—and the well could be plugged by early next week, which would actually be right on schedule. Though virtually no oil has leaked from the well since BP capped it nearly a month ago, the response isn’t over yet. The job will be done “once the well is killed and there’s no threat of discharge,” Allen said in a briefing today.
Indeed, there’s still one further step to go before BP can finish the relief well. The company is planning an additional pressure test on the Macondo well to ascertain the condition of the annulus—the outer casing of the well—before it completes drilling. There’s some concern that cement from the static kill—when BP pumped some 200 barrels of cement through the top of the well, along with drilling mud—might have made its way into the annulus, potentially sealing it off. “The indications are that the casing has been filled with cement down at that level, but we will not be sure of that until we finish the pressure checks,” Allen said. It’s a precaution, he added—BP wants to be sure of the condition of the annulus before it finishes drilling.
Fair enough. At this point the company, maligned though it might be, deserves some credit for its work since capping the well in mid-July. But on shore, however, complaints are persisting. A report in AFP today charged that after placing massive orders for boom and other cleanup equipment, BP had quietly reneged on contracts, leaving manufacturers with inventory they can’t sell:
Larry Buck, chief executive of Victory Awning in Fort Worth, Texas, said BP owed his company 400,000 dollars for boom orders and that he wasted another 500,000 dollars on raw materials that he could have invested elsewhere.
Buck said he initially hired additional workers but is now laying off about 20 people, or one-fifth of his work-force.
“We’ve gotta cut somewhere,” he said by telephone. “We’re not like the government. We’ve gotta pony up every week.”
Except to hear more complaints like that one as the response shifts away from the crisis of capping the well and protecting the coasts, and toward what will be a very long debate over who gets paid and who doesn’t. The first phase of the Gulf oil spill belonged to the engineers and environmentalists. The next one will belong to the lawyers.