May 30 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc began outlining its plan to contain oil leaking from its Gulf of Mexico oil well after the company and U.S. government officials abandoned a three-day effort to plug the hole.
In a two-step process, underwater robots will shear away sections of damaged pipe, according to a BP illustration posted today on the spill command’s web site. That should permit BP to install a “snug seal” to a new pipe that would carry “a great majority of the oil” to a drill ship on the surface, Doug Suttles, the BP executive in charge of the spill response, said yesterday in a press conference. The job will take four to seven days, he said.
Failure to plug the well from the top, a method dubbed “top kill,” means “the real solution is a relief well,” Mary Landry, the government’s on-scene spill coordinator, said yesterday. Drilling a relief well to intersect the damaged well near the bottom of the hole will give BP better control over the pressurized flow of oil and gas, allowing it to inject drilling mud and cement to plug the flow.
BP’s “best forecast” for finishing the first of two relief wells it has begun drilling is early August, Suttles said. Meantime, curbing the amount of oil spilled will reduce pollution, he said. The undersea gusher already is estimated to be the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, and more than twice as big as the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
