As plug holds, work on relief well resumes

NEW ORLEANS – Encouraged by signs that a new cement plug was setting properly, BP on Friday returned to the drilling operation that will spell the ultimate end of its notorious Gulf of Mexico well.

It has been a landmark week for BP, which succeeded in stuffing its damaged deep-sea well with heavy mud and then cement, effectively shutting it down more than three months after the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 workers and set off a slow-motion environmental disaster.

BP was waiting for the 500 barrels of cement it pumped into the well to dry and administering pressure tests to make sure the plug was holding. “Everything I saw early on in the pressure test was very encouraging that the cement job went well,” BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said Friday afternoon.

In the meantime, the company was turning to the relief well operation, which was suspended during the pumping. That final, meticulously executed phase is expected to take about a week, as BP drills the remaining 100 feet of the relief bore in increments, periodically pausing and taking bearings to make sure the drill bit is headed in precisely the right direction.

Friday, the company drilled about 15 feet to check the condition of the surrounding rock formation and will resume the boring Sunday night. Wells said engineers expect to pierce the bottom of the damaged well sometime between Aug. 13 and 15.

Mud and cement will then be pumped into the outer area of the well, a space called the annulus. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the federal spill commander, has said that it would then probably be necessary to breach the inner well casing and pump mud and cement into that.

But BP believes this week’s cementing, poured through the top of the well, has filled the length of the casing, likely precluding that step. That means the ruptured well could be fully and permanently sealed by the end of next week.

The blowout preventer atop the well will then be hauled to the surface and taken to shore, where it will be examined as part of the investigation into the cause of the disaster. A new blowout preventer will be lowered in place and BP will go through a formal well abandonment procedure, Wells said.

With no oil leaking into the Gulf since the well was mechanically capped in mid-July, BP has begun to wind down its massive cleanup operation.

“We’re far from finished,” Doug Suttles, the company’s outgoing cleanup chief, said Friday. “But clearly we feel like we’re moving to a new phase because it has been three weeks since we’ve seen oil flowing into the sea and there is no recoverable oil on the water.”