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This and other equipment will preserve existing capability for use by the oil and gas industry in the US Gulf of Mexico while Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell build a system that exceeds current response capabilities.

As per the agreement with the Marine Well Containment System operator ExxonMobil, the sponsor companies’ project team will utilize the BP technical personnel from the Deepwater Horizon response.

BP vice president for Gulf of Mexico operations Richard Morrison said that the company believes that the addition of its recently gained deepwater intervention experience and specialized equipment will be important to the marine well containment system.

The MC252 well has been shut-in since 15 July and cementing operations in August, following the static kill, provided an effective cement plug in the well’s casing.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward said that this is a significant milestone in the response to the Deepwater Horizon tragedy and is the final step in a complex and unprecedented subsea operation – finally confirming that this well no longer presents a threat to the Gulf of Mexico.

The relief well drilled by the DDIII rig intercepted the annulus of the MC252 well on 15 September, followed by pumping of cement into the annulus on 17 September.

BP will now proceed to complete the abandonment of the MC252 well, which includes removing portions of the casing and setting cement plugs.

A similar plugging and abandonment of both relief wells will occur as well, the company said.

Two individual trustees have been named to the newly-established trust that will administer the account:  John S Martin, a former US district judge for the southern district of New York, and Kent Syverud, dean of the Washington University School of Law.
Citigroup will serve as corporate trustee and paying agent for the account.

An approaching storm in the Gulf of Mexico will delay BP’s work on a relief well by two to three days, the final step in permanently killing the source of the world’s worst offshore oil spill, the top US spill official said. BP suspended work on the relief well aiming to bore into its blown-out Macondo well hours before the National Hurricane Center said a tropical depression formed over the Gulf of Mexico.Computer models forecast the depression would move northwest, crossing the spill site before making landfall in Louisiana or elsewhere along the north-central Gulf coast by Wednesday night or early Thursday.

The day long cementing operation followed earlier injections of heavy drilling mud this week that had subdued the upward pressure of oil and gas inside the deep-sea Macondo well. The crippled wellhead was provisionally capped in mid-July. This is not the end, but it will virtually assure us that no oil will be leaking into the environment,” retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who oversees the US oil spill response operation, said at a briefing in Washington.

“Monitoring of the well is under way in order to confirm the effectiveness of the procedure,” BP said in a statement announcing completion of the cementing work. The so-called “static kill” at the top of the well is due to be finished off with a “bottom kill” later in August with more mud and cement injected through a relief bore being drilled into the ruptured well shaft. This relief well is regarded as the final step in plugging the reservoir 13,000 feet (4,000 metres) beneath the seabed. “I will declare this well dead once we’ve intercepted the annulus (the space between the well pipe and surrounding rock) and we’ve assessed how much mud or cement we need to do from the bottom to finally kill this well,” Allen said.

Allen said BP would likely resume drilling the relief well 24 to 36 hours after the cementing was done, with the initial intercept expected within five to seven days after that. Progress in shutting off the cause of an environmental disaster for the US Gulf Coast came as a relief for both BP, whose image and stock took a beating, and US President Barack Obama, whose approval ratings suffered over criticism of his administration’s handling of the spill.

BP, which has lost over a third of its market value since the 20 April  blast that killed 11 workers, sank the Deepwater Horizon rig and triggered the spill, has said it would sell about US $30 billion in assets to cover costs related to the disaster.                                                                           Agencies

When asked about a potential stake in London-based oil producer, he told, “We are looking across the board. We have been partners with BP for years.”

BP is a partner with state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, known as Adnoc and produces oil in the UAE.  BP CEO Tony Hayward said on 7 July that he had a “very good” meeting with the crown prince as analysts said the oil producer may be looking for support from Middle East investors.

BP shares have gained 26 per cent since the start of July as the company gets closer to containing its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst oil spill in US history. “We would welcome any investor buying or increasing their stake,” said Robert Wine, a spokesman for BP in London while declining to comment on Abu Dhabi.                                                                          Agencies

The manoeuvre released a torrent of oil that will spew unrestrained into the Gulf for four to seven days — the time BP says it will take to put in place a bigger cap and seal. Officials say the new cap would capture all the oil leaking from the well and funnel it 1 mile upward to vessels on the water’s surface. The new solution, 82 days into the worst oil spill in US history, would not allow crude to billow out the bottom and the top, as the current cap does, said Kent Wells, senior vice president E&P BP.

“The difference is one completely seals and the other didn’t,” Wells said. Retired coast guard admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the US response to the spill, had said the cap switch could be finished by late Sunday or Monday. BP’s plan, which Allen approved late Friday, showed a four- to seven-day process.

Wells said the longer stretch allows for unexpected problems. BP has another cap ready to install if the new, bolted-on cap and seal does not work, he said. A Reuter’s witness who was viewing the Discoverer Enterprise drillship on Saturday afternoon from the Transocean Development Driller 2, a rig that is drilling one of two relief wells, said the Enterprise was not flaring natural gas and looked quiet. He said he did not see torrents of oil gushing up.

A live video feed on BP’s website showed the removed cap hanging from a line used to lift it from the leak. A different feed showed an underwater robot starting the next phase of the switch. Wells said BP was doing final hookups and tests of an additional rig that can collect up to 25,000 barrels a day in hopes that it could begin operating on Sunday.

The procedures are part of BP’s effort to upgrade its oil-capture system with four vessels that can handle up to 80,000 barrels of oil a day and disconnect and move quickly if a hurricane approaches.                                                                                                                                                        Agencies

A person with knowledge of BP’s thinking as saying the British oil company would examine how to address the department’s concerns “without having to give advance notice of market-sensitive information and transactions.”

The US Justice Department had requested that all the companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, including BP, advise the department about its plans for transactions such as asset sales, divestments or other major financial dealings.

The person familiar with BP’s thinking described the request as “peculiar” and “probably not legally enforceable.” A BP spokesman declined to comment on the report. He would only confirm that the company had received the request and that it had not yet responded. “We will reply in due course,” said BP spokesman Daren Beaudo. The Department of Justice declined to comment.

BP aims to fix its leaking Gulf oil well by 27 July, ahead of its earlier target of mid-August, to show investors it has limited its burgeoning oil spill liabilities. The July 27 target date is the day the company is due to report second-quarter earnings and will speak to investors.

“In a perfect world with no interruptions, it is possible to be ready to stop the well between 20 – 27 July,” said the head of BP’s Gulf Coast restoration unit Bob Dudley.

In another development BP chief executive Tony Hayward met with an Abu Dhabi state investment fund on Wednesday, part of a quest for cash to ward off takeovers and help pay for the worst oil spill in US history.                                                                                                                        Agencies

A desperate race is on to contain the catastrophe, with BP readying a potential subsea fix and troops and prisoners rushing to limit damage to the coast, where crude has started to reach shorelines.
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Investors have driven the value of BP shares down more than $30 billion, far exceeding even the worst estimates of the spill’s cost, reflecting uncertainty about how the calamity will play out, with an unprecedented and shifting situation.

With oil gushing unchecked from the sea floor at an estimated daily rate of least 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 litres), and the expanding slick oozing across the surface, Wednesday was shaping up to be another rough one for the oil industry and its soiled reputation.

The scheduled US House of Representatives hearing and a series of panels in coming weeks could spawn new legislation on offshore drilling, an issue which has been thrust onto the crowded domestic agenda of President Barack Obama.

If Tuesday’s hearings are anything to go by, Wednesday’s congressional grilling is likely to be harsh.

In hearings before two Senate committees, lawmakers accused executives from BP America Inc, Transocean, and Halliburton of trying to shift the blame to each other, and subjected them to tough questions about safety and how the well was sealed.

Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, at one point interrupted BP America’s president, saying, “The culture of this company has been one accident after another.” BP had been trying to repair its image since a 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery killed 15.

Also on Wednesday, an activist group called Seize BP plans protests at the company’s offices and other sites across the United States to demand the government freeze its assets to ensure payment for the cleanup and compensation for those hurt by the spill.

Eleven workers were killed in the April 20 explosion that sank the rig. Fisheries and tourism, two of the Gulf’s economic mainstays, and birds, sea turtles and other wildlife, are all threatened by the unfolding fiasco that could next month exceed the Titanic-sized Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.

Cathy Norman of the Edward Wisner Donation, a land trust that owns the property that makes up the Port of Fourchon, the principal supply harbor for the Gulf’s deepwater oil and gas industry, said the area’s shoreline already is “disappearing at an astronomical rate”.

“The land is holding on by its fingernails. If oil gets in there and the plants all die off, we’re going to have just all water,” she said.

BP spokesman Daren Beaudo, who took reporters on a boat tour, said oil had already washed ashore at three locations: Dauphin Island, Alabama; the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana; and the South Pass-Port Eads area on a remote stretch of Louisiana’s mainland.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal on Tuesday urged the National Guard to expand efforts to reinforce the state’s storm-battered shoreline as a buffer against the slick.

Jindal’s call for additional helicopter sand-bagging operations along stretches of beach, and crews to fill in other shoreline breaches with sand hauled in with dump trucks, came just as the state ran short of oil containment booms for newly menaced coastal areas west of the Mississippi River.

The Unified Command for spill response operations said the US Air Force was flying in additional boom to Louisiana from Alaska. But Jindal said time was growing short.

Besides an expansion of emergency coastal restoration work, Jindal sought approval from federal authorities for plans to dredge sand from the Gulf floor to build artificial barrier islands in three zones off southeastern Louisiana. He said such an operation could start to produce new land within 10 days.

The U.S. government is also concerned about whether enough protective booms are being provided to adequately defend the US Gulf Coast shoreline, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Tuesday.

“We have some concerns about getting adequate boom,” she told reporters during a visit to Mobile, Alabama, referring to the plastic barriers that are being strung along the coast to keep the oil off the shore.

BP will try covering the leak with a much smaller funnel than the 98-tonne dome it tried in vain to put in place over the weekend. The so-called “top hat” dome is expected to be placed over the relentless leak on Thursday.

In Port Fourchon, Louisiana, fatigue-clad Army National Guard troops from the 769th Engineer Battalion of Louisiana sweated alongside prisoners in scarlet red pants and white T-shirts with “Inmate Labor” on the back as they filled giant 1,000-pound (450-kg) sandbags.

Black Hawk helicopters dropped the sandbags to plug gaps in coastal beaches through which the oil could seep.

US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and US Energy Secretary Steven Chu were to meet with scientists and engineers from both industry and the federal government at the BP Command Center in Houston to discuss ways to stem the disaster.