For weeks now, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen has been very clear: BP’s blown well would be considered fully fixed when the relief well was finally completed. “This well will not be killed until we do the bottom kill,” Allen said last week.
But it turns out that might not be true. As we reported yesterday, the final phase of relief well drilling is on hold pending a pressure test of the original well’s outer casing, otherwise known as the annulus. BP is trying to determine if any cement—200 barrels of which was pumped down the top of the well during the recent static kill—might have flowed through the hydrocarbon reservoir and then back up the annulus. If that’s the case, finishing up the relief well—or bottom kill—might not be necessary. The static kill would have essentially finished off the well itself. “If the cement is already there [in the annulus] it would obviate the need for the bottom kill because the cement would already be there,” Allen said this afternoon.
BP is performing the pressure test this evening, and should know the results by Friday. If it turns out that the bottom kill is still necessary, Allen said the last stage of the operation should be complete within 96 hours or so—after which this blown well, which has come back to life more often than a slasher film killer, should finally be dead in the engineering sense of the word. (After the well is killed, BP will still need to plug and abandon it, an official procedure always undertaken after a well has been kicked like an empty keg, but that will be overseen by the agency formerly known as the Minerals Management Service, not Allen’s team.)
BP might be justified in skipping the bottom kill, but that will send a worrying message to Gulf coast residents and politicians, who are already feeling abandoned by the sudden drop in attention. (Why write about the oil spill when there’s a guy escaping from his job via an emergency slide? With beer?) It didn’t help that Allen has been publicly musing about being able to step down from his position within the next few months, reinforcing those Gulf fears:
“This is going to be a long-term situation,” Jefferson Parish Council Chairman John Young said. “I think it’s way too early for the federal government have a ‘mission accomplished’ type of attitude.”