1st step to plug oil appears imminent

Crews prepare for ‘static kill’ of well

 Admiral Thad Allen, U.S. Coast Guard National Incident Commander, left, and Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, speak to the media in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, D.C.
Admiral Thad Allen, U.S. Coast Guard National Incident Commander, left, and Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, speak to the media in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, D.C.

— A procedure intended to ease the job of plugging the blownout Gulf well for good could start as early as the weekend, the government’s point man for the spill response said Thursday.

The so-called static kill can begin when crews finish work on drilling the relief well 50 miles offshore that is needed for a permanent fix.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said crews would drop in casing for the relief well later Thursday, and that could speed up work on the static kill, though he did not say by how much. He previously said it would begin late Sunday or early Monday.

Since capping the well July 15, London-based BP has monitored the well’s pressure and checked the seabed around it for leaks that might turn into another gusher. Government scientists have reached a consensus that there are no leaks and none will be triggered by the static kill, Allen said.


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“Pressure has slowly risen, and it’s risen in a pattern that’s consistent with a well with integrity,” Allen said. “We feel it’s safe to go ahead.”

BP still needs to ensure that the damaged well is plugged by intercepting it from the bottom and inserting additional cement as needed, Allen said. The company is preparing to insert a final 2,000 feet of steel piping before the static kill attempt can begin. Lines that will inject mud into the well from the top also need to be connected securely, Allen said.

The static kill, which involves pumping heavy mud into the broken well from the top, is on track for completion sometime next week. Then comes the bottom kill, in which the relief well will be used to pump in mud and cement from the bottom; that process will take days or weeks, depending on whether the static kill works.

Allen also said there is now little chance that any of the spilled oil will reach the East Coast, and the odds will go to zero as the well is killed. The Coast Guard expects oil to keep showing up on Gulf Coast beaches four to six weeks after the well is killed.

A temporary cap has held in the oil for the past two weeks, and Allen said crews are having trouble finding patches of the crude that had been washing up since the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people.

Before the well was capped,it spewed between 2.24 million to 4.38 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. No one knows how much of that oil might still be lurking below the surface, but most of what was coming ashore has broken up or been sucked up by skimming boats or burned.

“The oil that we do see is weathered. It is sheen,” Allen said.

Also Thursday, Allen had what he called a frank andopen discussion with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and coastal parish officials concerned that the Coast Guard and BP PLC will pull back from the spill response once the oil is stopped permanently.

“One of the things we absolutely wanted to get today was their commitment that they’re in it for the long-term,” added Gov. Jindal. “Look, all those [federal] people in the room, with no disrespect ... they’re going to be rotated out to different jobs. Everybody here is still going to be here dealing with this oil whether it’s a year from now or years from now.”

Allen said federal, state and local officials will come up with a plan by next week for how to clean up any oil that might continue washing up on beaches and in wetlands.

BP said incoming Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley will be in Biloxi, Miss., this morning to outline the company’s long-term plans and announce that it will be getting help from James Lee Witt, who was head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the Clinton administration.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said as he arrived for the meeting that it’s clear the cleanup effort is being scaled back even though oil is still showing up on the coast.

He said his biggest fear is that BP and the federal government “are going to start pulling back. They say they are not but already they have canceled catering contracts, they’ve stopped production of boom at factories.”

Nungesser also said reports that oil has been disappearing from the surface have been exaggerated.

“Yesterday there was a flight where no oil was seen. I don’t know how they took that flight, but they must have bobbed and weaved around the oil because in Plaquemines Parish there is oil all over,” he said.

Barring a calamity, the oil won’t start flowing again before BP can permanently kill the well, which could happen by mid-August.

A report by the National Resources Defense Council found oil still fouling beaches even after the gusher was capped July 15. Since the spill started, beaches from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle have been closed or slapped with health warnings more than 2,200 times, the council found.

Allen said once the oil leak stops for good, the Coast Guard may start moving out some of the 11 million feet of boom, 811 oil skimmers and 40,000 people that have been part of the oil spill response. Many of the workers are fishermen who have lost their livelihoods because of the spill.

LOCATION FOR LAWSUITS

Meanwhile Thursday, a federal judicial panel wrestled with perceptions of bias and conflict concerning both judges and geography in figuring out where to consolidate more than 300 lawsuits filed against BP and other companies in the wake of the Gulf oil spill.

The lawsuits claiming economic damages filed by shrimpers, commercial fishermen, charter captains, property owners, environmental groups, restaurants, hotels and others began appearing only days after the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank in April.

Filed in at least 12 states, they mostly name as defendants BP, rig owner Transocean Ltd., well contractor Halliburton Co. and Cameron International, maker of the well’s failed blowout preventer.

Some of the 23 attorneys who appeared before the seven-member U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation suggested that sending the cases to the oil-and-gas hub of Houston, favored by BP, might appear unfair to the Gulf fishermen, property owners, restaurateurs and others suing for spill-related economic losses.

Some attorneys questioned whether New Orleans was a good choice, considering only four of New Orleans-based judges would be available to hear the case, in part because of recusals due to their oil and gas industry investments. In addition, many people in Louisiana could ultimately benefit from a major oil spill settlement.

The clear favorite among plaintiffs and the U.S. Justice Department is New Orleans federal court, which is closest to the disaster and has the most pending cases.

The judicial panel is expected to announce its decision in August.

FUTURE FOR FISHERMEN?

There were 1,584 “Vessels of Opportunity” in use as of Thursday, according to the Deepwater Horizon Unified Incident Command website. Thousands more vessels - nearly 3,500 in Louisiana alone - are under contract with the BP program that has given many whose fisheries were shut down by the spill work skimming oil, putting out boom or ferrying cleanup supplies.

Oysterman Ronnie Kennair and his brother got $2,000 for each of the roughly 30 days they used their boat to help in the cleanup.

Kennair of Empire, La., is hoping for more work, especially given the prospects for his normal job.

“I went and checked my oysters, actually, yesterday, and they’re 100 percent dead,” he said.

BP said in a news release Thursday that it has stopped accepting new vessels in the program but will continue to use vessels now in the program. Allen said authorities are looking at using some of the vessels to put out sensors to monitor oil as boom and response equipment is removed. He said they are trying to figure out the size of the force they need long-term.

Most fishing grounds in the northern Gulf are closed because of the spill, though some in state waters have been reopened to recreational fishermen. Federal regulators have not said when fishing may open in federal waters, which span areas a few miles offshore.

Information for this article was contributed by Harry R. Weber, Greg Bluestein, Kevin McGill, Brian Skoloff, Curt Anderson, Rebecca Boone and Cain Burdeau of The Associated Press and by Jim Polson of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/30/2010

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