British Petroleum Cap Going Well….No Pun Intended
Posted By thestatedtruth.com on July 13, 2010
By Jim Polson and Jessica Resnick-Ault
Jul 13, 2010
BP Plc plans to start testing today on a new cap over its leaking Gulf of Mexico well to determine whether it can stop the largest U.S. oil spill in history while continuing work on a permanent plug.
Starting about noon local time, a 40-foot (12-meter) stack of valves secured atop the well yesterday will shut off the flow of crude, BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells told reporters on a conference call. The test will measure pressure inside the well to determine whether the cap can remain in place without causing oil to burst uncontrolled through another opening.
BP seeks to halt the leak, estimated by the U.S. government at as much as 60,000 barrels of oil a day, until its Macondo well can be plugged with cement next month. The London-based company said the new cap has pressure-monitoring equipment that wasn’t available in May, when it abandoned an effort to seal the well from above. Without that equipment, operators wouldn’t know if shutting the valves forced oil to gush out elsewhere.
“If the integrity says we need to open the well back up, we will immediately start collecting oil again†through a system piping crude to vessels on the surface, Wells said.
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