Drilling of relief well halted

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.aolnews.com/gulf-oil-spill/article/new-delay-for-bp-spill-drilling-of-relief-well-halted/19553428

Updated: 44 minutes ago

New Delay for BP Spill: Drilling of Relief Well Halted

(July 14) -- Fearing an undersea explosion, BP has announced two setbacks in the effort to stop its catastrophic oil spill, saying it has temporarily halted work on one relief well and delayed pressure tests on a tighter-fitting cap it hopes will stop the flow.

Work on the relief well has been suspended at nearly 16,000 feet down while the company does "further analysis" before it conducts integrity and pressure tests on the new containment cap installed over the weekend. The pressure tests have been delayed for up to two days. Work on the other relief well continues.

BP calls the relief wells, which are supposed to plug the leak with mud and cement, "the sole means to permanently seal and isolate the well."

Drilling on the first relief well began on May 4 and nearly two weeks later for the second. They were to be finished in August, but BP recently moved up its timeline to the end of July, although that was before the latest delay.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Oh great. "an undersea explosion"

The dreadful just keeps on coming.

[LisaL]

2. Undersea explosion? Why does BP fear and undersea

explosion? Did their preliminary tests show something really bad? This just keeps on getting worse and worse.

[golddigger]

5. Methane gas leak. We are fucked.

[LisaL]

8. Why were even allowed to drill at that location?

We could very well be screwed with no end to this.

[KeyWester]

3. I thought they stopped drilling because..

they needed to calculate exactly where to send the drill bit ?

Not to run tests on the cap, one has nothing to do with the other. :shrug:

[IrishBuckeye]

4. and Obama wants a suspension offshore oil drilling!? The nerve of that man!!!

Doesn't he understand that nothing can go wrong with offhshore drilling? Besides if something was to go wrong they have backup plans like building relief wells which are fool proof!

[Myrina]

15. ... he was for offshore drilling before he was against it ...

.... just sayin' ....

[tridim]

6. Actually it was halted because they're currently testing the integrity of the new cap.

The cap is a very important piece of hardware that is meant to work in conjunction with the relief well. It must contain the pressure of the cement they plan to pump in from below.

Integrity of the cap is key, and it must be 99.9999% accurate.

[LisaL]

10. They have delayed those tests.

The tests on the integrity were supposed to start on Tuesday and now they have been delayed.
I presume the tests have been delayed not because everything is just going super well.

[joeybee12]

12. Which is always what happens after the media reports BP has high hopes or hopes

to have someting in place/done/finished soon...they don't really know what the phuck they're doing.

[Ganja Ninja]

13. They halted the relief well drilling because the blow-out preventer on that well

failed a test.

[jaxx]

7. This has some good information about the testing and the RW.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6726#comments_top

[PufPuf23]

9. "(July 14) -- Fearing an undersea explosion"

This does not sound good at all.

[uppityperson]

11. It will take time to seal this well so it doesn't blow out again.

If they just cap it, the pressure will blow out somewhere else or blow the sides out. It is very frustrating watching all of this, painful for the world.

[tk2kewl]

14. Doesn't he mean "... to make sure we don't create make a catastrophic situation worse."

"The test has been carefully designed to make sure we don't create a bad situation," BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said in a telephone briefing with reporters Tuesday afternoon.

[Poll_Blind]

16. When they say "undersea explosion", though, they're almost certainly...

...talking about the BOP going, not some sort of world-ending catastrophe.

* Stopping drilling the relief wells: There is speculation that the reason for this is that the pressure could be so high when they conduct the pressure test that it could possibly fracture the rock where the drill strings for one or both relief wells are. Which would be a lot of pressure and a lot of fractured rock but right now there isn't much of a competing explanation as to why.

Couple of weird things though...

* Halting/delaying the pressure test itself: Speculation tends to run in two possible veins A) There is a leak with the collar that was installed, a leak has developed under the BOP or they believe the BOP may not be able to withstand the pressure of the test or B) There is something with the pressure itself which scares the hell out of them and this data has either been collected from the oil coming out of the collar or through the mapping of the area- as in, bulging of the sea floor or something similar.

From some of the threads I read at TOD (and these were just a very few), they're really wanting to know what those pressure numbers are and why they haven't been shared (even if preliminary numbers) with the public yet.

Basically a lot of posters I've seen at TOD think something spooked both the US Govt/BP/etc. but they don't know what. Alternatively, the freeze could merely be the result of a dispute about exactly what to do next.

PB