NEW ORLEANS BP says its engineers have begun pumping heavy drilling mud into the blown-out Gulf of Mexico oil well in hopes of choking it for good.
BP spokesman John Barnes said crews launched the so-called static kill process today at 3 p.m. CDT to plug up the well and then possibly seal it with cement.
The well has leaked millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf since a BP rig exploded in April and killed 11 workers. The company was able to bottle up the leak last month with a cap, but engineers always considered that a temporary solution.
They then plan to pump mud and cement through that to permanently suffocate the source of the oil.
Tests for the effort started a couple hours earlier as crews probed the broken well bore with an oil-like liquid to determine whether there were any obstructions in the well and to assess the pressure of the bore and the pump rates it could withstand.
Crews should know within hours whether the mud is pushing down the oil as envisioned. But engineers still wont know for more than a week whether the attempt achieved its goal because they have to wait for completion of an 18,000-foot relief well to reach the reservoir from the bottom.
This is a really positive step forward, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said earlier, calling it good news in a time where that hasnt been very much good news, but it shouldnt be a cause for premature celebration.
Company officials earlier said the static kill alone which involves slowly pumping the mud down lines running from ships a mile above might be enough to plug the oil leak.
But the only surefire way to make certain the well is permanently plugged is to fill it from below with mud and cement, via the relief well, in a so-called bottom kill, Allen said. The relief well is set for completion as early as Aug. 11.
The static kill could take days to complete, mostly because it involves slow pumping of mud, said Allen, the governments point man on the spill response.
The effort is meant as insurance for the crews that have spent months fighting the spill. The only thing that had been keeping the oil from blowing into the Gulf was an experimental cap that has held for more than two weeks but was never meant to be permanent.
Allen added earlier Tuesday that there should be no ambiguity that the primary relief well will be finished, regardless.
Its important to begin soon, he said, with the peak hurricane season just around the corner.
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