New cap, ships could contain Gulf leak by Monday

By TOM BREEN
Associated Press Writer


NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The federal official leading the Gulf oil spill cleanup said Friday a new containment cap and an additional ship collecting oil could effectively contain the spill in the next three days.

The work to replace a leaky containment cap on the well head with a tighter one will begin Saturday, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said. At the same time, a ship connecting to a different part of the leak is expected to come online Sunday.

Oil will flow unimpeded into the Gulf during the cap switch for at least part of the weekend.

If all goes according to plan, the combination of the cap and the new vessel could collect all the leaking oil by Monday, stopping it from escaping into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since April 20.

"I use the word 'contained,'" Allen said. "'Stop' is when we put the plug in down below."

Work continues on what officials hope will be the final plugging of the well - drilling on two relief wells through which mud and cement will be pumped to stop the leak once and for all. That's expected to happen sometime in mid-August.

The new containment cap is expected to form a better seal over the well head, to allow more of the oil to be collected and sent up to ships on the surface for collection or burning.

"Technically it's pretty achievable," Allen said. He said if the new cap can't be placed on the well, the old cap will be put back and there are multiple backup caps available in case any one cap fails.

The new, tighter cap should be in place early Monday. Allen said the ship Helix Producer, which is to be hooked to a different part of the leaking well - lower than the new cap - will start collecting oil Sunday and be fully operational Tuesday. He has previously said that the full system should be able to collect 60,000 to 80,000 barrels a day.

The schedule for both efforts has been accelerated to take advantage of what could be a rare window of good weather. The hookup of the Helix Producer was delayed this week by poor weather. But an unexpected break in weather patterns creating choppy seas provides a window of a week or so with waves of only 1 or 2 feet.

"Everybody agrees we got the weather to do what we need," he said.

Containing the leak is not the same as stopping the environmental catastrophe that began April 20 when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers.

The relief wells remain the best option for a final plug to the leak, at which point cleanup and restoration become the main focus.

Though officials said the first relief well could be finished by the end of July, weeks ahead of schedule, they are quick to point out that such an optimistic timetable would require ideal conditions every step of the way.

That is something that has rarely happened since the leak began.

BP: Top Kill Operation - Animated - May 26, 2010

Animation showing the Top Kill process designed to stop the flow of oil from the well. Heavy "kill mud" is pumped down a drill pipe, then through hoses that go through the manifold on the seafloor. The mud then moves through another set of hoses attached to the Deepwater Horizon blow-out preventer's choke and kill lines, then into the well.
Animation showing the Top Kill process designed to stop the flow of oil from the well. Heavy "kill mud" is pumped down a drill pipe, then through hoses that go through the manifold on the seafloor. The mud then moves through another set of hoses attached to the Deepwater Horizon blow-out preventer's choke and kill lines, then into the well.
Click here to see animation on YouTube.


Deepwater Horizon Response

Kevin Costner oil spill cleanup idea interests BP

By Mark Guarino

Film star Kevin Costner is joining the ranks of scientists, engineers, and lawmakers in an international effort to figure out how to contain and clean up oil streaming into the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of 210,000 gallons a day.
Mr. Costner appeared in New Orleans last week to demonstrate a $24 million oil extraction device he is pitching to BP and Coast Guard officials. Costner says the device will clean oil from the water at a rate of 97 percent. BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Wednesday that his team will test the device next week.
Costner's involvement in helping solve oil spill crises is not new. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster in Alaska motivated the actor to help fund a consortium of scientists to develop technology that mitigates oil-infected water before it hits the coast. The technology is ready to combat the BP spill, he told reporters last week.
"It's not anymore about talk," Costner told WWL-TV in New Orleans. "It's about doing the walk, and that phrase was probably invented down here."
Costner's company, Ocean Therapy Solutions, provides multiple machines designed to address spills of different sizes. The largest can clean as many as 200 gallons per minute, Costner said. The company reports it has 20 such machines ready to be employed.
"The machines are basically sophisticated centrifuge devices that can handle a huge volume of water and separate [the oil] at unprecedented rates," Ocean Therapy Solutions CEO John Houghtaling said last week.


Costner said the machines work by drawing in the infested water where it then breaks it down, allowing the oil to discharge through a separate pipe. His audience, a gathering of local parish presidents, appeared eager to get the device to the Gulf.
"To me, this is a major tool for a tool box that should be tested," said Craig Taffaro, St. Bernard Parish president.
Besides saying that Costner's device will be tested next week, BP's Suttles said his company and the Coast Guard have been collecting ideas from the public since Day One of the crisis. The command center receives 100 ideas a day, Suttles said.
Costner said his decision to fund the technology was a result of needing to use the wealth he was "lucky" to accumulate instead of "piling it" for no real purpose.
"We all make decisions about what we want to be a part of. I'm just one person focusing on a specific problem and throwing a little resources to a lot of talent and manpower ... to come up with what is a [solution]," he said.

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Gulf Spill: The Blame

May 19, 2010: While politicians and environmental groups step up to posture in the face of the Deep Water Horizon disaster, the company who is taking the brunt of the criticism has not been afforded the right to a fair hearing of facts in the press.

Since the well blew in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20th, several things have happened that warrant a clear and concise explanation.

In what stands to be one of the biggest oil spills in the history of the United States, the cause of the spill now appears to be an unauthorized modification of the blow out prevention (BOP) valve.


The Blame

BP's Deep Water Horizon oil rig exploded and sank off the cost of Louisiana last month. Eleven rig workers are missing, which was operated by Swiss-based Transocean Ltd, the largest independent driller in the world.

Meanwhile, the BOP failed to stop the flow of oil as it should have after the explosion and allowed oil to pour into the Gulf of Mexico. Fingers are being pointed at BP, even though Transocean was the sub-contractor.

Eventually, BP will be exonerated. But first we will all have to play a game of cover our asses.

From the subcontractor who reportedly modified the BOP without the knowledge or permission of BP, to the government regulators who okayed the modified BOP, to the Obama administration who wants to look tough on BP even thought they had no culpability, everyone is running for cover.

After the BOP was installed, the modifications made after the fact are assumed to have prevented the part from operating properly.

These modifications were discovered by remote operated vehicles whose pictures transmitted to engineers trying to find out why the BOP didn't activate, showed the part had been altered.

Government Response

Meanwhile, the Federal Government responded by splitting up the regulating and revenue collecting functions of the Minerals Management Agency, to as President Obama described, break up the cozy relationship between regulators and the oil industry.

However, the action to split up the functions draws attention to just who was responsible for permitting the BOP that failed to work. Could it have been that an MMS inspector didn't properly follow through with the BOP test monitoring?



BP's Safety Record

Much has been written since the well blew four weeks ago about BP's safety record. But that says nothing about the company today and the focus on safety they have made the last two years.

While many press accounts recall the explosion at BP's Texas City refinery in 2005, and the spill at Prudhoe Bay a year later, those incidents occurred before BP's current CEO Tony Hayward assumed control.

Since the spill, Hayward has been a visible point man for BP. He wasted no time in appearing on major network news shows to describe the situation on the ground. He has mobilized 2,500 workers to the site, including several from Anchorage, and he has accepted full responsibility for the disaster.

This shouldn't be surprising. After all it was Hayward, who in 2005 won accolades from BP employees for speaking out against the way the company was handling the Texas City disaster, criticizing his bosses for "a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well."

The Politics

The politics are bare knuckle.

The spill has given fodder to environmentalist to once again raise a ruckus about offshore oil & gas drilling. Congressmen, one right after another, attempting to look tough, are demanding answers from BP they already have received. And the White House continues to posture on the real issue which is; energy supplies come at a risk.

But the fact is the Gulf of Mexico accounts for almost a third of America's oil production and has been where most of the new finds have been for oil companies.

Furthermore, before the April 20th disaster, there hadn't been a leak from an offshore well in 40 years.

As the Economist recently opined, "If Americans do not want to hand more money and clout to the likes of Iran, Russia and Venezuela, the argument runs, they should not curb offshore drilling."

The impacts have reached Alaska. The spill has set off another round of opposition to offshore drilling in Alaska and age old worries about a spill in the Arctic conditions. But these concerns are unfounded.

Currently, as a result of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, Alaska has the toughest regulations in the world. Companies like Shell Oil who are exploring off Alaska's shores are required to abide by and held to a much higher standard of prevention and response then anywhere on the globe.

The more and more you hear of the Deep Water Horizon tragedy the more you'll learn that it was a careless contractor who set the stage for the disaster. And as I said, at the end of the day BP will be exonerated in my opinion.

Let's hope for the future of our nation's energy security we don't use one bad incident in 40 years as an excuse to stop offshore drilling.

And let's hope we get bp: beyond posturing.

Andrew Halcro's blog

Obama scolds BP

President Obama vented his frustration Friday during a statement to the press he issued from the White House Rose Garden.

Flanked by cabinet members and other administration officials overseeing the federal response to the blow-out, he lit into industry representatives who appeared at congressional hearings on the spill earlier this week.

"I did not appreciate what I consider to be a ridiculous spectacle during congressional hearings into this matter," he said. "You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else."

Nor did federal regulators escape the tongue-lashing. The president criticized what he termed "a cozy relationship" between oil companies and federal regulators in which "permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from oil companies" and oil companies exploited loopholes that "allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews," Obama said.

Part of the challenge – and the frustration – in coping with the blow-out lies in determining just how much oil the submarine gusher is releasing.

Official estimates from the federal government and BP, which owns the oil lease the Deepwater Horizon was working, place the leak rate at some 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of oil a day. That alone is has been enough to trigger a regional emergency response.

But independent experts say the leak rate is likely to be much larger.

A week ago, Florida State University marine scientist Ian McDonald put the leak rate at around 25,000 barrels a day.

And in a report Friday morning, National Public Radio cited estimates from three independent scientists who say at least 50,000 barrels of oil a day are flowing into the Gulf waters. That would imply that the Deepwater Horizon disaster could be releasing at least the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez spill every five days.

These estimates have wide margins of error, cautions Timothy Crone, a scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.

In an email exchange, Dr. Crone, one of the three scientists NPR contacted, noted that his approach honed on estimating the material spewing from deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

He says that videos of the blow-out taken by robotic cameras at the well head lack the detail needed for more precise estimates of the flow. Moreover, the material emerging from the well head is a mix of methane, mud, and oil.

Taking all that into account, he puts the flow rate at roughly 50,000 barrels of oil a day.

"My numbers should be viewed with caution," he warns, but adds, "the flows are almost certainly higher than 5,000 barrels a day."

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Hayward applauds President's statement on oil spill
Release Date: 02 May 2010
“The US government leadership here has been excellent since day one. I agree with the President that the top priority right now is to stop the leak and mitigate the damage. I reiterated my commitment to the White House today that BP will do anything and everything we can to stop the leak, attack the spill off shore, and protect the shorelines of the Gulf Coast. We appreciate the tireless efforts of the many federal, state and local responders and the volunteers, men and women who have worked tirelessly since the date of the accident to mitigate the damage. Our teams are working hand in hand and we look forward to hearing more recommendations for action from the President’s visit today.”



-Tony Hayward, from Houma, Louisiana






Hayward Comments on President Obama's Statement
Release Date: 14 May 2010
Tony Hayward, BP Group Chief Executive, today said:

“We absolutely understand and share President Obama’s sense of urgency over the length of time this complex task is taking. We want to thank the President and his administration for their ongoing engagement in this effort.

“BP - working closely with scientists and engineers from across the whole oil industry, from government agencies and departments, and with local officials along the Gulf Coast - is focused on doing everything in our power to stop the flow of oil, remove it from the surface, and protect the shoreline. We are working with state and community leaders to mitigate the impact on the lives and livelihoods of those who have been affected.

“And while we continue in these efforts, we are participating fully in investigations that will provide valuable lessons about how to prevent future incidents of this nature.”

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response

Keep Up with the latest progress on the response efforts in the gulf.

Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill Response

A subcontractor Transocean reportedly modified the BOP without the knowledge or permission of BP

Exclusive from Andrew Halcro

In what stands to be one of the biggest oil spills in the history of the United States, the possible cause of the spill now appears to be an unauthorized modification of the blow out prevention (BOP) valve.

Oil rig explosionBP's Deep Water Horizon oil rig exploded and sank off the cost of Louisiana last week. Eleven rig workers are missing, which was operated by Swiss-based Transocean Ltd, the largest independent driller in the world.

A subcontractor Transocean reportedly modified the BOP without the knowledge or permission of BP, to the government regulators who okayed the modified BOP, to the Obama administration who wants to look tough on BP even thought the company had no culpability, everyone but BP is running for cover.

New evidence shows BP will eventually be exonerated.



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This document is also packed full of information concerning the blast aa well as pictures of the Horizon