Second relief well to be drilled on Friday: BP
Tony Hayward, left, and Kent Wells speak to the briefing at BP's Housto headquarters PHOTO: BP
The UK based BP continues their effort to contain the Macondo blowout. According to the BP chief executive Tony Hayward the second relief well, to be drilled by the Transocean semisub development driller II, could spud as early as Friday. Speaking at a media briefing in Houston he said, “The industry will learn from this and there will no doubt be changes. We now have a global industry effort in the Gulf.”
Later, BP’s senior vice president E&P Kent Wells told that, “We have a small army working to halt the blowout.”
BP has prepared to lower a smaller containment dome – dubbed a “top hat” – over the main leak on the riser which linked the Transocean semi-submersible Deepwater Horizon to the subsea blowout preventer (BOP) stack and wellhead template. The small dome will be connected by drill pipe and riser lines to Transocean’s drillship Discoverer Enterprise. Wells said the dome would be connected to the drillship and will be operational before it is lowered 5000 feet to the seabed.
Deployment of the five foot by four foot dome should be within the next 72 hours, Hayward said, adding that the company believed it had overcome the problem of gas hydrate formation, which had rendered the larger “Macondome” useless.
Earlier, BP spokesman Matt Taylor said, “There should be a higher concentration of oil and less sea water under the smaller dome than there was under the large one. We believe this will hinder the formation of hydrates.” The larger Macondome now lies on the sea floor about 200 metres away from the ruptured riser it was meant to cap. BP has no plans to retrieve the dome at the moment.
BP had warned earlier that hydrate formation was a possible risk with the Macondome – but it appears that the supermajor believed that hydrates would form in the riser, not in the dome itself.
BP is still canvassing alternative options to try to staunch the estimated 5000 barrels per day flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from the blown-out wellbore. It is moving ahead with plans for a top kill option – first mooted late last week.
Meanwhile, US Congress is gearing up its Macondo investigations with a pair of hearings. The US Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources will grill execs from Transocean, BP and Halliburton on Tuesday morning. Last week, a number of Democratic leaders called to increase the liability cap on companies responsible for oil spills from US $75 million to US $10 billion.
The Macondo well – a discovery well which was to be temporarily abandoned ahead of later completion as a subsea producer – blew out on 20 April and the rig sank on 22 April. BP has a 65 per cent stake in Mississippi Canyon Block 252. Anadarko has 25 per cent and Japanese player Mitsui the remaining 10 per cent.
