‘Top Kill’ Fails to Plug Leak

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Het is nu al de ergste milieuramp en wordt nog een veelvoud erger.
Tijd om de inschatting van de risico's vóóraf én de controle daarop door
de overheid grondig te herzien.

Het 9/11-moment voor het milieu.

Het wordt ook duidelijk dat de uiteindelijke schade de financiële waarde
van BP gaat benaderen.
De prijs van het aandeel is van $62 naar $43 gedaald en de totale
beurswaarde staat nu op $134 miljard. Er is dus al $59 miljard van afgegaan.

BP kan het tijdstip van de betaling van de schade rekken door juridische
procedures, maar de rekening komt er (onder politieke druk).

Groet / Cees

PS. Het bedrijf dat de Nederlandse olievangers maakt, kan de produktie
behoorlijk gaan opvoeren. Er liggen enorme kansen om de milieuschade te
beperken.

May 29, 2010
‘Top Kill’ Fails to Plug Leak; BP Readies Next Approach
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30spill.html
By LESLIE KAUFMAN and CLIFFORD KRAUSS

NEW ORLEANS — In another serious setback in the effort to stem the flow
of oil gushing from a well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico, BP
engineers said Saturday that the “top kill” technique had failed and,
after consultation with government officials, they had decided to move
on to another strategy.

Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and
production, said at a news conference that the engineers would try once
again to solve the problem with a containment cap and that it could take
four to seven days for the device to be in place.

“After three full days of attempting top kill, we now believe it is time
to move on to the next of our options,” Mr. Suttles said.

The abandonment of the top kill technique, the most ambitious effort yet
to plug the well, was the latest in a series of failures. First, BP
failed in efforts to repair a blowout preventer with submarine robots.
Then its initial efforts to cap the well with a containment dome failed
when it became clogged with a frothy mix of frigid water and gas.
Efforts to use a hose to gather escaping oil have managed to catch only
a fraction of the spill.

BP has started work on two relief wells, but officials have said that
they will not be completed until August — further contributing to what
is already the worst oil spill in United States history.

The latest failure will undoubtedly put more pressure — both politically
and from the public — on the Obama administration to take some sort of
action, perhaps taking control of the repair effort completely from BP.

President Obama, who is spending the Memorial Day weekend in Chicago,
issued a statement Saturday evening on the decision to abandon the top kill.

“While we initially received optimistic reports about the procedure, it
is now clear that it has not worked,” Mr. Obama said.

He said that Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard had “directed
BP to launch a new procedure whereby the riser pipe will be cut and a
containment structure fitted over the leak.”

“This approach is not without risk and has never been attempted before
at this depth,” Mr. Obama said. “That is why it was not activated until
other methods had been exhausted.”

The president continued, “We will continue to pursue any and all
responsible means of stopping this leak until the completion of the two
relief wells currently being drilled.”

For BP, the besieged British company, the failure could mean billions of
dollars of additional liabilities, as the spill potentially worsens in
the weeks and months ahead.

“I am disappointed that this operation did not work,” Tony Hayward,
chief executive of BP, said in a statement. “We remain committed to
doing everything we can to make this situation right.”

A technician who has been working on the project to stem the oil leak
said Saturday that neither the top kill nor the “junk shot” came close
to succeeding because the pressure of oil and gas escaping from the well
was simply too powerful to overcome. He added that engineers never had a
complete enough understanding of the inner workings of drill pipe casing
or blowout preventer mechanisms to make the efforts work.

“Simply too much of what we pumped in was escaping,” said the
technician, who spoke on condition of remaining unnamed because he is
not authorized to speak publicly for the company.

“The engineers are disappointed, and management is upset,” said the
technician. “Nothing is good, nothing is good.”

The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on
April 20, killing 11 people. Since then, it has dumped an estimated 18
million to 40 million gallons into the gulf.

After the announcement Saturday, the disappointment was palpable along
the Louisiana shoreline, where the oil has increasingly washed up in
sticky, rusty globs.

Michel Claudet, the president of Terrebonne Parish, 60 miles southwest
of New Orleans, said that when he heard the news, he felt “sorrow,
despair and like this ordeal will never finish. If you go around the
parish, it is all our folks talk about.”

Mr. Claudet said that he was trying to remain hopeful, but that it was
increasingly difficult. “As every item fails,” he said, “I am less and
less optimistic.”

In New Orleans, Margaret Shockey, 67, a retired teacher, said, “One
thing’s for sure, this is the last city that deserved this.”

Last week, BP described the top kill — which was an effort to pump heavy
mud into the well to counter the flow of oil — as its best hope for
stopping the spill. During the course of the operation, BP officials had
often expressed optimism that it would work.

But on Saturday, Mr. Suttles said the operation had pumped 30,000
barrels of mud into the well and yet failed to stop it from flowing.

Admiral Landry called the failure “very disappointing.”

The new strategy is to smoothly cut the riser from which the oil is
leaking and then place a cap over it. Pipes attached to the cap would
take the oil to a storage boat on the surface.

Though a first effort at a containment dome failed, Mr. Suttles said BP
had learned from that experience and now believed that this cap, which
is custom fitted to the riser, would be more successful.

He said it would capture most but not all of the oil leaking from the
well, which is believed to be gushing 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

He would not give odds for the operation’s success, but said he had “a
lot of confidence” that it would work.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Suttles said preparations for such an
alternative plan were already under way, just in case. “That equipment
is on stage and ready to go,” he said. Equipment is being deployed on
land and on the seabed, he said.

If the new cap is not successful, the company has said it will look into
attaching another blowout preventer to the one that already exists at
the wellhead and has not functioned.

But officials emphasized that the real solution to the spill was the
relief well. They said one of the relief wells was currently proceeding
ahead of schedule, but was still at least a month away.

“It’s like a bad movie that just won’t end,” said Billy Altman, 45, a
mechanic in New Orleans. “You know, you think they finally killed the
bad guy, and then he comes back to life. It’s crazy.”
----------------------------------------------
Kosten olieramp BP naar $760 mln
http://www.fd.nl/artikel/15206158/kosten-olieramp-bp-760-mln
24 mei 2010, 13:06 uur | FD.nl

De kosten van de olieramp in de Golf van Mexico lopen steeds verder op.
Olieconcern BP schat de kosten inmiddels op $760 mln, zo'n $22 mln per
dag. Ondertussen is het gat nog steeds niet gedicht.

Vorige maand schatte BP de kosten op circa $6 mln per dag. Half april
ontstond een brand op het olieplatform Deepwater Horizon van BP,waarna
het platform zonk en elf mensen om het leven kwamen. Niet veel later
bleek dat er olie in zee lekte vanuit de onderzeese oliebron. Tot dusver
is het BP niet gelukt om het gat te dichten. BP zegt vandaag in een
verklaring dat het nog steeds onzeker is dat het gat met andere
technieken kan worden gedicht.

'Des te langer het duurt, des te meer kosten er bijkomen', aldus Greg
Smith, van onderzoeksbureau Fat Prophets in Londen tegenover persbureau
Bloomberg. De uiteindelijke rekening zal pas over zes maanden duidelijk
zijn, maar kan tot $10 mrd oplopen, schat Smith.

Commissie

Vorige week stelde de Amerikaanse president Barack Obama een commissie
in die onderzoek moet doen naar de olieramp in de Golf van Mexico. De
commissie gaat niet alleen onderzoeken wat de oorzakenzijn van de
huidige olieramp, maar ook hoe dit soort milieurampen in detoekomst
kunnen worden voorkomen. Twee politieke veteranen, een Republikein eneen
Democraat, komen aan het hoofd te staan van de commissie, die in
totaalzeven leden krijgt.

Aanvankelijk kreeg voornamelijk oliemaatschappij BP, huurder van het
booreiland, veel kritiek, maar de laatste tijd staat ook de
Amerikaanseregering onder vuur. De regering zou niet genoeg doen om de
gevolgen van deolieramp te beperken. Obama wijst nog steeds met een
beschuldigende vinger naar BP, maar erkent dat ook Washington een
verantwoordelijkheid heeft.

Aandeel BP

Het aandeel BP staat maandag ruim 3% lager in Londen. Het aandeel is
bijna met een kwart gedaald sinds het ongeluk. Daarmee is de marktwaarde
van BP met circa $42 mrd gedaald.
----------------------------------------------
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bp-to-pay-69200-safety-fine-for-us-refinery-2010-05-29
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- BP PLC (BP  42.95, -2.43, -5.35%)  agreed to
pay a $69,200 fine for safety violations found at its Cherry Point
refinery in Washington, the state's labor department said Friday.

The 225,000-barrel-a-day plant located near Blaine, Wash., received
citations on May 5 for 13 serious safety violations for insufficient
process-safety management issues following state inspections. BP also
had the option to appeal the citations or request a meeting to discuss them.

Such safety violations are commonly found across the U.S. refining
industry, which is the most frequent source of accidents or explosions
related to chemical hazards.

"While it is good that BP has decided to correct the hazards without an
appeal, we are disturbed that more than 10 years after the explosion
that killed six workers at the Equilon refinery, our inspectors are
still finding significant safety violations every time we inspect one of
the refineries in the state of Washington," said Michael Silverstein,
assistant director for the Washington State Department of Labor and
Industries' Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

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