Engineers worked yesterday to replace a cap over a gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after reporting good progress in attempts to contain the worst environmental disaster in US history.
Operations reached a critical phase as engineers raced to take advantage of a stretch of fine weather in the midst of the Atlantic hurricane season and install a new system with the potential to capture all the leaking crude.
Expected to take between four and seven days, the round-the-clock work began at midday on Saturday when the old, less efficient cap was ripped off a fractured pipe 1.5km down on the sea floor by robotic submarines.
“We are pleased with our progress,” BP vice president Kent Wells told journalists.
“We have carefully planned and practiced this whole procedure. We’ve tried to work out as many of the bugs as we can,” he said
A transition spool must first be lowered and bolted onto the leaking pipe before a gigantic funnel — weighing 68,000kg and dubbed the “Top Hat 10” — can be set in position.
The old “Top Hat” collected 25,000 barrels (3.8 million liters) of crude on average each day, but estimates suggest that could be less than half the total leak.
BP says the new system and the deployment of a third containment ship called the Helix Producer will raise capacity to between 60,000 and 80,000 barrels a day, enough to contain the whole leak.
“We’ll capture it all at some point,” Wells said.
The new system is also designed so it can be disconnected and reconnected more easily in the case of a hurricane and has a built-in device that should give the first precise estimate of the overall flow.
“We’re in a very critical point in the containment efforts,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
“The new containment procedure will more than triple our containment capacity when it’s all said and done,” he said.
No permanent solution is expected until the middle of next month at the earliest when the first of two relief wells is due to be completed — allowing drilling fluids to be injected into the well, which would then be sealed with cement.
The removal of the old cap forced the suspension of the main containment operation, but a separate siphoning system is taking a smaller proportion of the oil, some 8,000 barrels a day, to be flared off on a surface vessel.
Wells said two more ships would join a fleet of 46 skimming vessels scooping oil off the sea, and 15 controlled burns of crude had been carried out on Saturday thanks to the calm conditions.
Oil has washed up on beaches in all five Gulf states — Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida — forcing fishing grounds to be closed and threatening scores of coastal communities with financial ruin.
Meanwhile, Kenneth Feinberg, the man charged with doling out compensation to victims of the spill, said on Sunday he could not estimate whether the initial US$20 billion fund set up by BP would be enough to pay compensation claims.
US and British media reported on Sunday that BP was in talks to sell up to US$12 billion of assets, including a substantial stake in a giant Alaskan oil field, to Apache Corp as it seeks to build up the disaster fund.
While the containment effort and the claims process continued apace, the attorney general said the US Department of Justice was still weighing whether to bring criminal charges.
“We are in the process of accumulating documents, talking to witnesses on both the criminal side and the civil side,” US Attorney General Eric Holder said.
Holder stressed that when he announced the probe on June 1, he had been careful not to mention BP by name as the British energy giant was not the only party involved with the Deepwater Horizon rig.
At congressional hearings in May, BP, rig owner Transocean and oil services provider Halliburton blamed each other for the spill as executives from the three oil titans were grilled by US lawmakers.
The BP-leased rig exploded on April 20 killing 11 workers.
Also See: Prospect of takeover looms over BP
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese