BP was poised Tuesday to conduct an “integrity test” that could spell the end of the Gulf of Mexico gusher, which in the past 12 weeks has created what has been called the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
That’s the best-case scenario. The well could fail the test — and the gusher would return.
Using robotic submersibles, the company’s technicians planned to close valves one by one on the well’s new cap, a 150,000-pound “3 ram capping stack” installed atop the dysfunctional blowout preventer. The oil will cease to flow if all goes as hoped.
Federal authorities and BP engineers want to see a steady increase in pressure. This would suggest that the Macondo well, which blew out April 20 and destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig, killing 11 men, is intact, and that oil and gas are not leaking into the surrounding mud and rock formations below the gulf floor.
If the pressure readings are too low, BP will abandon the test and the clawed arms of robotic submersibles will reopen the valves. BP will resume trying to capture as much leaking oil as possible while continuing to drill a relief well that could kill Macondo with mud and concrete.
“Everybody hope and pray that we see high pressures here,” BP senior vice president Kent Wells said Tuesday. “Bear with us. Let’s do this test.”
The test could take at least two days. If authorities determine the well can remain closed — “shut in,” to use the oil industry terminology — then Macondo would no longer pollute the gulf, and ships would stop collecting or burning oil and gas.
The relief well is getting close. It’s 4 feet laterally from Macondo, with about 150 feet more to drill vertically. But the target is narrow — a steel casing slightly less than 10 inches wide, with a 7-inch pipe inside. The final stages are painstaking, and BP and the government still say the bottom-kill is not likely to take place until August.
During a conference call Monday, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles was asked why the new sealing cap and the shut-in strategy had not been attempted earlier. He defended the company’s strategy, saying that certain steps could be taken only after engineers had gathered information about the well. A major concern all along was to avoid anything to make the situation worse, he said.
“The problem is, I’ve had to take these steps to learn the things I’ve learned,” he said. “Without taking those steps, it’s unlikely that I would have known what I know now.”
Suttles’ comments came as the head of the new federal agency overseeing oil drilling delivered a harsh critique of oil companies drilling in deep water, saying they do not know how to contain a major spill.
“They don’t have a fix on what the most effective containment strategies are,” Michael Bromwich testified to a presidential commission investigating the spill. He said that was a chief reason for extending the Obama administration’s moratorium on deep-water drilling.
The assessment from Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, signaled a new attitude from the director of the agency that regulates the nation’s oil drilling operations. The agency, formerly known as the Minerals Management Service, was broadly criticized for its lax oversight.
Bromwich, who took over the agency June 15, faced pointed questions about the close relationships between the oil industry and members of his permit and inspection staffs. He was asked about the Louisiana office where workers accepted sports tickets and other gifts from companies they were regulating, as described in recent inspector general reports.
“We are not going to politely ask the industry to fix things,” Brom wich said. “We are going to demand they fix things and sanction industry almost immediately” for lapses, rather than asking for compliance, as before.
William Reilly, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who co-chairs the presidential commission, said he had new appreciation for the economic hardships caused by the drilling ban. He said he would look into whether some rigs could be reactivated after inspection.
