Alex Thomson blogs on BPs worst case option that they’re facing now.
The days become weeks, weeks roll out into months. And suddenly BP are now thinking that their worst case option for when everything else they have tried has failed – might indeed end up being their only option.
Namely, that the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe will go on spewing crude into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico from April through to August until they finally penetrate the well with a freshly-drilled relief well to take off the oil.
Even BP are not shying from the word catastrophe now. Their Managing Director Bob Dudley told CNN:
“You see the films of the oil washing on some of the beaches in Louisiana. This is catastrophic for, well, every employee of BP. It is catastrophic for the 24,000 people down there working on the spills that we’ve let some get through these defences.”
Meantime what have BP got in mind? Well three options. None of them tried and tested at the depth of 5,000 feet. All of them now looking pretty long shots.
First ,they’re trying to pump in heavy fluid – mud and sediment to overcome the outward flow of oil. They have 16 men out there experienced in capping the Kuwait wellheads which Saddam’s troops blew up.
I saw what Saddam did in Kuwait and I saw what BP did in the Gulf – the Kuwaiti oil fires were child’s play on every level of comparison. Surface as opposed to extreme depth. In air as opposed to water. Ignited oil as opposed to gushing liquid crude into pristine deep ocean.
Second option? They call it “the junk shot”. Once again it can only be done by robots at this depth. How else can anything be achieved? It involves inserting high-temperature rubber in to the flowing well head. Well, who knows?
The third possible choice is called loss circulation material. Again another attempt to plug the gushing well head – in fact there are three gushers down there now.
But if all of these fail then there is no hope but to wait for another drill bit to puncture the crippled well and take off the crude. Not a scenario BP ever thought they would be seriously facing. But then again BP said this well was most unlikely to fail in the first place.
So you have to ask – who on earth are BP to trust when it comes to talking about the terrible mess they have made? Precisely the question they really are asking on Capitol Hill, right now.
Washington is so running out of patience. Here’s Senator Edward Markey, a Deomcrat :
“I think now we’re beginning to understand that we cannot trust BP. People do not trust the experts any longer. BP has lost all credibility. Now the decisions will have to be made by others, because it’s clear that they have been hiding the actual consequences of this spill. ”
The evidence of BP’s conduct since the disaster began clearly suggests the Senator has right on his side. BP are on record minimising this disaster from the moment it happened. At federal government level key officials accused BP of breaking every deadline it has set to cap the destroyed well. And they too, are right.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said yesterday:
“I am angry and I am frustrated that BP has not been able to seal its blown-out well.
“We are 33 days into this effort, and deadline after deadline has been missed,” he told reporters after visiting BP’s U.S. headquarters in Houston.
“If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately.”
But Salazar knows as well as anybody that the US government is totally reliant upon guess who for all real knowledge about this well?
Yup – BP.