Leak further delays BP's well-capping attempt
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A leaking piece of equipment has caused further delays to BP’s attempts to seal its damaged oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.
Engineers have closed the first of the three exit flows from the latest cap fitted to the well, but have discovered a leak at another exit known as the choke line.
The company must now attempt to fix the leak before they can fully seal the cap and carry out tests on the well’s integrity to make sure that the high pressure of oil doesn’t damage it.
BP spokesman Robert Wine told The Engineer: ‘This is a fairly minor problem that is expected to take hours, not days, to fix.’
The leak is the second delay to the testing, following a decision on Tuesday night to carry out further analysis that pushed operations back by 24 hours.
If the cap can be successfully closed, BP plans to monitor the pressure of oil in the well for around 48 hours to ensure that oil doesn’t start to leak out from new points.
However, the cap is only designed as a temporary measure. The only way to seal the well permanently is to drill relief wells, which are not expected to be ready until August.
If the cap is unsuccessful, BP hopes to use the exit flows to collect between 60,000 and 80,000 barrels of oil a day – far more than it has previously been able to collect and enough to exceed the flow from the well, according to government estimates.
BP is facing further setbacks because of a proposed law that would prevent it from obtaining offshore drilling permits for up to seven years.
The US House of Representatives is preparing a bill that would target oil companies responsible for 10 or more deaths in the last seven years. It doesn’t name BP specifically, but 11 workers were killed by the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig that caused the Gulf of Mexico spill.
In a further development, US secretary of state Hilary Clinton has said she would look into a request by several senators that the government investigates whether BP had a role in the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
BP has denied media reports that suggest the firm lobbied for the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was freed last August, in hope of securing an oil-exploration deal with Libya.
