Oil disaster: BP misses 'deadline after deadline'
Updated on 24 May 2010
Science correspondent Julian Rush writes that BP is now pinning its hopes on "top kill" to stop the flow of oil from its well in the Gulf of Mexico, but a BP executive says there is only a 60 to 70 per cent chance of success.
BP is exhausting every possibility to plug the devastating oil spill in
the Gulf of Mexico, Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen said Monday, indicating he
couldn't push the company aside even if he wanted to.
"To
push BP out of the way, it would raise the question, to replace them with what?"
Allen, who's heading the government response to the spill, told reporters at a
White House briefing.
The White House is facing
increasing questions about why the government can't exercise more
control over the catastrophe as oil still spurts into the Gulf weeks after the
drilling rig BP was leasing caught fire and sank.
Congress is getting ready to quadruple a tax on oil used to help finance cleanups. The increase would raise nearly $11bn over the next decade.
The tax is levied on oil produced in the US or imported from foreign countries. The revenue goes to a fund managed by the coast guard to help pay to clean up spills in waterways, such as the Gulf of Mexico.
The tax increase is part of a larger bill that has grown into a nearly $200 billion grab bag of unfinished business that lawmakers hope to complete before Memorial Day.
More
coverage of the BP oil spill from Channel 4 News:
-
Top Kill and Junk Shots - what it all means
-
Blog: BP's last option to stop the spill?
-
Louisiana oil spill 'an ecological time bomb'
Rick Steiner, a leading marine biologist, told Channel 4
News criticism that government failure
was mostly to blame in allowing the accident to happen in the first
place.
"There's not much more the federal government can do right
now. People need to take a deep breath and understand that tackling the leak is
going to take time. Now its like keystone cops running around pointing the
finger and trying to find someone to blame."
"A lot could have been
done before the accident occurred to ensure safety by BP, Halliburton,
Transocean and the government regulators to ensure they were prepared for such
an eventuality. And when the accident took place the government should have sent
more equipment, more vessels and more manpower down to the Gulf sooner than they
did."
"But in terms of topping the blowout immediately - whether
they should have taken over that operation is open to question."
The spill began after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on 20 April killing 11 workers and sinking the drilling platform. Its impact now stretches across 150 miles from Dauphin Island, Alabama to Grand Isle, Louisiana.
This week BP will attempt to shut off the oil spill using a so-called "top kill" technique.
"We need it to work," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told CNN, but asked to rate the chances of success on a scale of one to 10, he said: "It's not a 10, it's not that certain, but it's above a 5 - a 6 or a 7".
Yesterday, US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he is "not completely" confident that BP knows what it is doing, and that Washington was frustrated and angry that BP has missed "deadline after deadline" in its efforts to seal an oil well more than a month after the disaster started.
"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Salazar said.
Chief
correspondent Alex Thomson's
analysis:
You have to ask – who on earth are BP to trust
when it comes to talking about the terrible mess they have made? Precisely the
question they really are asking on Capitol Hill, right now.
Washington is
so running out of patience.
But Salazar knows as well as anybody that the
US government is totally reliant upon guess who for all real knowledge about
this well? Yup – BP.
Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, accompanied by a US Senate delegation, flew over the affected areas today.
Federal officials have acknowledged that BP has expertise that they lack in stopping the deep-water leak.
Live
video feed of the BP oil spill:
BP are broadcasting a live video
feed showing the leaking pipe along with a containment devise aimed
at siphoning the oil to the surface where it is then stored in a
drillship.
Click on the image below to view the video
stream
Yesterday Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal visited one of the affected nesting grounds.
"As we talk, a total of more than 65 miles (100 kilometres) of our shoreline now has been oiled," said Jindal, who announced new efforts to keep the spill from spreading.
"We're going to continue to fight this fight to protect our coast and we're going to make sure that we restore these wetland and estuaries we're going to make sure we hold BP accountable to paying to get this done," he added.
Top
Kill and Junk Shots - what it all means:
BP is pinning its hopes on
stopping the flow of oil from its well in the Gulf of Mexico on a technique
called Top Kill. Science Correspondent Julian Rush explains
what it is.
There were some pretty snide comments made by US politicians
when it emerged that BP planned to block the flow of oil from its ruptured well
by firing golf balls, pieces of rope and bits of old rubber tyre into the pipe.
But there was science behind the choice of objects.
Top Kill is a well
established oil industry technique used to shut off broken wells. I watched it
being used, for example, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War when Saddam
Hussein's retreating Iraqi troops set fire to hundreds of oil wells in the
Kuwaiti desert.
But it has never been tried before 5,000 feet under the
ocean.
The idea is simple. Officially called "bridging material", the
"junk shot" of golf balls and other objects is pumped down a pipe from the
surface into a manifold that BP engineers are connecting to two valves - the
Choke and Kill Valves - on the Blowout Preventer (BOP). That is the device on
the seabed at the top of the well whose spectacular failure to automatically
shut off the flow of oil when the Deep Water Horizon rig exploded in a fireball
caused the spill.
Also in a chamber in the manifold is tonnes of heavy
mud, called kill mud.
The manifold is like a loaded double-barrelled
shotgun, the mud and the junk shot pumped to very high pressures.
First
the junk shot is fired from one barrel into the BOP where it should lodge
against the partially closed rams that should have closed fully to stop the flow
originally. The golf balls and bits of rubber tyre are chosen carefully to be
both flexible enough to catch and tangle inside the riser pipe in the BOP and
small enough to effectively block it.
Immediately afterwards the second
barrel is fired, sending the mud into the BOP up against the blockage made by
the junk shot and down into the well underground. Once enough mud is pumped in
the flow should stop, when the final step, of cementing the well to seal it
completely can begin.
If it fails first time, BP says it can reload the
manifold and try again several times. But if it doesn't work at all then the
only hope is the relief wells they are drilling. That will mean another two
months of oil gushing out before the well can be capped.
Assessing cost
British oil group BP believes about 5,000
barrels have been leaking every day, although some experts have given
significantly higher estimates for the size of the leak.
BP has been collecting oil from a mile-long siphon tube. However, the company reported that this is only capturing around 2,010 barrels a day on average - and as few as 1,360 barrels on some days.
Work is also continuing to try to disperse the huge oil slick which has reached the surface of the sea, with more than 1,100 boats and recovery vessels being used and nearly 2.5 million feet of boom.
The oil giant put the cost of the clean-up at $760m (£523m), but said it was too early to put a figure on what the final bill might be. The cost has soared by $135m (£93m) in the past week alone.
The spiralling costs has hit the company's share prices, which fell around three per cent as investors reacted to renewed pressure from the US for the company to stop the leak.
