The static kill, which involves pumping heavy mud into the busted well from the top, is on track for completion some time next week. Then comes the bottom kill, where the relief well will be used to pump in mud and cement from the bottom; that process will take days or weeks, depending on whether the static kill works.
A temporary cap has held in the oil for the past two weeks, and Allen said crews are having trouble finding patches of the crude that had been washing up since the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people.
Before the well was capped, it spewed anywhere from 94 million to 184 million gallons of oil into the gulf. No one knows for sure how much of that oil might still be lurking below the surface, but most of what was coming ashore has broken up, been sucked up by skimming boats, or burned.
Also yesterday, Allen had what he called a frank and open discussion with coastal parish officials concerned that the Coast Guard and BP will pull back from the spill response once the oil is stopped permanently. “You know these parish presidents; no one held anything back,’’ he said.
He said they will work together to come up with a plan by next week for how to clean up any oil that might continue washing up on beaches and in wetlands.
Billy Nungesser, Plaquemines parish president, said as he arrived for the meeting that it’s clear the cleanup effort is being scaled back even though oil is still showing up on the coast.
He said his biggest fear is “they are going to start pulling back. They say they are not, but already they have canceled catering contracts, they’ve stopped production of boom at factories.’’
Barring a calamity, the oil won’t start flowing again before BP can permanently kill the well, which could happen by mid-August. Allen said the Coast Guard expects that oil will keep showing up on beaches four to six weeks after that happens.
In Boise, Idaho, a federal judicial panel wrestled yesterday with perceptions of bias and conflict among both judges and geography in figuring out where to consolidate more than 300 lawsuits filed against BP and other companies following the spill.
