http://www.aolnews.com/gulf-oil-spill/article/bp-may-go-back-to-ruptured-gulf-well-for-more-oil/19584376
This is the height of arrogance; BP should just walk away from this one. Their greed is showing when they should be showing their green. DV
Updated: 11 minutes ago
(Aug. 6) — BP may eventually try to tap the oil in its Macondo well, which spewed 4.1 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico in the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
“There’s lots of oil and gas here,” Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told reporters today. “We’ll have to think about what to do with that at some point.”
Suttles made the comments as BP waited for tons of cement it pumped into the blown-out well to dry. Assuming it holds, there is little chance of future leaks.
The reservoir of oil thousands of feet below the surface could contain almost $4 billion worth of crude, Bloomberg News
That’s a huge asset for any company to just sit on, especially one that is facing a cleanup bill of tens of billions of dollars. BP is in the process of selling assets in Colombia, the U.S., Canada and Egypt to raise funds.
The national incident commander, retired Adm. Thad Allen, skirted the topic of any future drilling, saying BP had not discussed any such plans with him
“I’d assume that’s a policy issue,” Allen told reporters.
BP plans to test the cement on the well with a burst of pressure today. The company has resumed drilling a relief well that should represent the ultimate solution to the busted well.
Once completed, the relief well will pump mud and cement into the bottom of the 13,000-foot-long bore. This so-called bottom kill technique will seal the reservoir from the bottom.
BP had left it ambiguous as to how the two relief wells it has been drilling would be used. If the bottom kill wasn’t carried out, the relief wells could theoretically have been used to extract oil and gas.
Federal authorities have been adamant that the bottom kill was the solution to the spill and that the “static kill” — filling the well from the top with mud and cement — was merely a step on the way.
Still, BP does not discount drilling elsewhere on the oil field.
“What we’ve stated is, the original well that had the blowout and the relief wells will be abandoned,” Suttles said, according to Agence-France Presse.
The disaster began back on April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 workers. The ruptured oil well then began to spew out enormous quantities of crude, defying several attempts by BP to seal it. It took BP nearly three months to halt the flow of oil, which was accomplished when the company was finally able to cap the well on July 15.
Nearly three-quarters of the oil that was released has been removed, dispersed or naturally broken down.
Suttles declined to comment when asked if BP would consider donating the proceeds from the sale of oil from the well to compensate victims of the disaster.
“We just haven’t thought about that,” Suttles said. “”What we’ve been focused on is the response right now.”
Special thanks to Richard Charter