Top Kill Postponed Until Tuesday

Oil spill video: Bob Marshall gives latest update

NOLA Update 21May2010
BP wants to be sure it has "all its ducks in a row" before it takes a chance on its top kill procedure -- so the attempt has been postponed until Tuesday.

This week the company began staging a variety of equipment including a barge carrying "kill mud," a semi-submersible pumping vessel and more than a dozen remote operated vehicles at the site of the sunken rig.

The process of shutting the well, called a "top kill," requires pumping mud into the well and then sealing it with cement. The mud, which is twice the density of water, will be pumped into the choke and kill lines of the blow out preventer at a high enough rate that it can overcome the flow of oil. BP has been using the remote operated vehicles to reattach the necessary wiring to the blow out preventer so that the company will be able to control the flow of mud down the lines.

The top kill has been attempted in shallow water, but never at 5,000 feet, Suttles said.

"I would stress that these operations are quite complex and we won't start the job until all of these options are in place," Suttles said.

Lars Herbst, Minerals Management director of the Gulf of Mexico region, said his agency is in the process of reviewing BP's plan for the top kill. The MMS must give its approval before the method can be attempted.

BP is still using a riser insertion tube tool to contain oil at the larger of the leak sites. The company said Thursday that the tube was capturing 5,000 barrels of oil per day from the well and had the capacity to capture more. _NOLA

The media continues to attempt to portray this disaster as "the apocalypse of the century", yet a much larger spill, Ixtoc, was cleared from the Bay of Campeche by natural forces within two years after the 10 month extended gusher was capped.

Academics, politicians, and faux environmentalists with their inflated tales of doom have been placed into the center of attention by a media intent on making a disaster into a total cataclysm.

Personnel from the U.S. Coast Guard, Minerals Management Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy and the U.S. Geological Survey, will provide an estimate of hydrocarbon flow rates from the well sometime next week. Until then we will continue to be treated to a wide range of estimates -- most of which will be nowhere close to true values.