Most of the oil that leaked from BP’s Macondo well from 20 April to 15 July is still beneath the water’s surface, scientists including Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia in Athens, concluded in a memo made public recently. The researchers say they drew upon the US government’s study while reaching different conclusions.

The Obama administration’s 4 August report indicated that almost three-fourths of the crude that leaked has disappeared or soon will be eaten by bacteria. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has said at least half of the oil released is now “completely gone.”

Chemist Dana Wetzel said that conclusion felt like the closing credits of a movie. “It’s like they were saying ‘the end,” Wetzel, program manager at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, said in an interview. “I’d say we have just gotten through setting up the plot.” Some scientists agree with the government that the oil has largely dissipated.“I don’t think it’s still lurking out there,” Edward Overton, an environmental chemist and professor emeritus at Louisiana State University, said.

“The Gulf is incredible in its resiliency and ability to clean itself up,” he said. “I think we are going to be flabbergasted by the little amount of damage that has been caused by this spill.”

The leak began after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by London-based BP exploded off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 workers and oiling as much as 650 miles of coastline.

The scientists who said that as much as 79 per cent of the oil is still in the Gulf of Mexico said their estimates don’t include oil known to have washed into coastal wetlands because such crude is too difficult to measure, according to the memo,  written by one of the researchers, Chuck Hopkinson, a University of Georgia marine scientist. Spokesmen at the White House and NOAA didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.                                                             Agencies

Optimism about the planned “static kill,” which will involve the injection of drilling mud into the top of the well. But BP said a test ahead of the operation, which had been planned for Monday, would now likely take place Tuesday because a hydraulic leak was detected. BP had been aiming to begin the static kill itself on Tuesday and remained cautiously optimistic it could still do so.

“It is anticipated that the injectivity test and possibly the static kill will take place Tuesday,” BP said in a brief statement late on Monday. The well was temporarily sealed two weeks ago but the static kill followed by the completion of a relief well later in August are seen as the permanent solutions to the leaking well, which US government scientists estimate has released almost 5 million barrels of oil since late April.

The worst oil spill in US history has been an environmental and economic nightmare for the Gulf coast and even if the crude is no longer flowing unchecked, the legal and political fall-out is still spreading unabated. At the same time, the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating insider trading in shares of BP, including whether BP employees profited illegally from the spill.

The full extent of the disaster was given added clarity on Monday when US government scientists refined estimates of how much oil had flowed into the Gulf from the well. The Flow Rate Technical Group and a team of scientists with the US Department of Energy say 4.9 million barrels of oil have been released. The flow rate was put at 62,000 barrels a day at the start of the spill in late April. That rate dropped to 53,000 barrels a day immediately before the well was sealed on 15 July, the group said. Officials also said BP had siphoned about 16 per cent of the 4.9 million barrels to vessels at the ocean’s surface, but the rest went into the sea.
The group’s previous leak estimate ranged from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.

Investors will scrutinize these figures closely as BP’s final costs may be tied to how much oil is estimated to have flowed into the Gulf from the spill. BP has already announced plans to sell  US $30 billion in assets over the next 18 months to help cover its liabilities related to the disaster.

They are expected to discuss BP’s role in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and whether the British energy giant had influence in the release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish prison last year — issues that have complicated transatlantic ties.

Cameron’s first visit to Washington as British prime minister comes amid a US backlash against BP. With an eye to British pensioners and other investors at home, he has pledged to stand up for the embattled company.

Aides to both leaders insist the talks aim to build on a personal rapport they struck up at last month’s Group of 20 summit in Canada and that the agenda will focus more on the war in Afghanistan, the global economy and the Middle East.

But BP and its role in the worst oil spill in US history loom large. Differences over BP’s treatment and over approaches to economic recovery raise fresh questions about a historic Anglo-American alliance already past its heyday.

Under heavy criticism over the Gulf disaster, BP faces demands from US lawmakers for an official inquiry into whether it had a hand in the release of the Libyan convicted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland. BP has confirmed it lobbied the British government in 2007 over a prisoner transfer deal because it was concerned a slow resolution would hurt an offshore drilling deal with Libya. But the company said it was not involved in talks on the release of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, sentenced to life for the deaths of 270 people, including 189 Americans.

Cameron has made clear he will defend BP, saying it must remain “strong and stable” to make good on its promise to compensate oil spill victims and for the sake of employees and people with pension funds invested in the company in both countries.
Obama, whose approval ratings have been undercut by public anger over the disaster, has taken a hard line with BP, although his rhetoric has softened recently amid criticism his administration had gone too in bashing the company. Obama and Cameron will meet amid hopes a capping test on the blown-out well, which has largely choked off the undersea flow of oil, will pave the way for a permanent fix.

And  BP said it had spent US $3.95 billion so far on efforts to tackle its leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico and that it aims to permanently kill the well in the first half of August.
Agencies

“We’re pleased with our progress,” BP senior vice president Kent Wells told reporters on a conference call. It will take up to a week for robots working 1 mile (1.6 km) underwater to completely fit a new cap and seal. Oil will flow mostly unchecked until the bigger containment system is installed, further hurting tourism and fishing in all five states along the Gulf Coast.

The British energy giant, which is also drilling two relief wells to try to permanently plug the leak, hopes the new containment system will funnel as much as 80,000 barrels (12.7 million liters) per day of oil to vessels on the surface — more than 3 times the current amount.

It expects the first of the relief wells to intercept Macondo by the end of July, a first step in plugging the well by early to mid-August.  BP is also on track to start a rig on Sunday evening that can siphon up to 25,000 bpd from the well, Wells said.  The Obama administration has pressed BP to take advantage of calm weather and move forward with the containment.

Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod, asked on the “Fox News Sunday” program about hopes the spill will be contained by the end of July, said he was “reasonably confident but obviously this thing is uncharted waters.”

BP, which has set up a US $20 billion spill fund under pressure from the White House, removed a smaller containment cap from the gushing well on Saturday.  On Day 83 of the disaster, US Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department has started interviewing witnesses as part of a criminal and civil investigation into the worst oil spill in US history.                                                                                                                                                                        Agenices

The district judge Martin Feldman heard opening statements of both sides on Monday in a case. The lawsuit is the first case seeking to reverse 28 May’s presidential decree imposing moratorium, which the companies say will force job cuts in the labour force. The ban has caused shutdown of 33 deepwater drilling rigs.

President Barack Obama imposed the six-month ban after an explosion aboard an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April which killed 11 workers and ruptured a well owned by energy giant BP, unleashing millions of gallons of crude into the ocean.

The spill, now in its 63rd day, has soiled the coastline of four US states threatening tourism and fishing industries; seeped into ecologically sensitive wetlands and marshes; battered BP’s image; and tested President Barack Obama, who has come under fire over his handling of the crisis.                                                                                                                                                                    Agencies

BP said its latest effort had captured 10,500 barrels of oil (439,950 gallons/1.67 million litres) in 24 hours and a second containment system should enable it to soon control the vast majority of oil spewing from the leak about 1 mile (1.6 km) below the water’s surface. The progress came as the company’s chief executive Tony Hayward said he has no plans to quit over his handling of the environmental disaster marked by a string of failures since the 20 April rig explosion that triggered the oil spill.

Thad Allen, the coast guard admiral heading up the federal relief effort, estimated the maximum collection from the containment device at about 15,000 barrels a day. Estimates put the well’s leak at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

Despite the progress, Allen  said “This will only end when we intercept the wellbore, pump mud down it to overcome the pressure of the oil coming up from the reservoir and put a cement plug in.  This will be well into the fall. This is a siege across the entire Gulf. This spill is holding everybody hostage, not only economically but physically, and it has to be attacked on all fronts.”

The company said that the operation, which will pump heavy mud down the wellbore in an attempt to gain control of the oil flow and ultimately kill the well has already begun. Earlier, BP chief Tony Hayward gave the top kill procedure a 60 per cent to 70 per cnet chance of success.

The fundamental error the BP official referred to concerned the results of a negative pressure test.  According to the investigators,  two hours before the explosion, as preparations were made on the Transocean semi-submersible deepwater horizon to start negative pressure testing of the wellbore, the system gained 15 barrels of liquid rather than the five that were expected, indicating there may have been influx from the well. A cementer witness was quoted as saying. “The well continued to flow and spurted.”

The investigator said the pressure test was then moved to the kill line, where a volume of fluid came out when the line was opened. It was then closed. At this time, pressure began to build in the system to 1400 pounds per square inch. The line was opened and pressure on the kill line was bled to 0 psi, while pressure on the drill pipe remained at 1400 psi.

The BP investigator said this indicated a “fundamental mistake” may have been made here as this was an “indicator of a very large abnormality.”  However, once the pressure was bled off, work continued as normal – the line was monitored and by 7.55pm the rig team were apparently satisfied the test had been successful and started displacing the remaining downhole fluids with seawater.
It is not made clear yet as who made decisions after the problem was found. BP and rig owner Transocean both had supervisors on the rig when it exploded.

Details of events leading up to the blowout come as new information from the leaking well seems to confirm widely held suspicions within industry that problems with cementing played a key role in the 20 April explosion.

BP performed diagnostic testing of the BOP – a move which will determine how the UK supermajor will design the top kill of the Macondo well or whether the procedure will work at all. Company official Kent Wells said that BP staff will begin testing to see if they can actually inject mud at each of the five entry points that could be used in the top kill. The tests are expected to take 12 to 24 hours and the results will determine how BP ultimately designs the top kill operation and any future well interventions.                                                                                            News Agencies