US optimistic end in sight in drive to permanently seal oil well

(News Today) - As the cement hardens Friday in the crippled oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, federal officials are sounding increasingly optimistic that the end is in sight in the drive to permanently seal the well.

BP finished pouring cement down the well on Thursday in an operation known as a "static kill," completing the job earlier than expected. The process took six hours.

The cement was poured on top of 2,300 barrels of heavy drilling mud sent down from a ship on the surface Tuesday, pushing oil back into the well reservoir.

Before word came that the cementing had been completed, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said the development would amount to a "significant milestone" in the long-running fight against the BP oil spill. Allen is the federal point man in the oil spill effort.

He said the cementing phase of the "static kill" operation is not the end of the process, "but it will virtually assure us there's no chance of oil leaking into the environment."

"We will have created a significant milestone and made a major step forward probably by tomorrow [Friday] when the cementing is done," Allen told reporters. Although Allen expected the job to take until Friday, BP announced late Thursday that the work had been finished.

"I think we can all breathe a little easier regarding the potential [that] we'll have oil in the Gulf ever again," Allen said. "But, we need to assure the people of the Gulf and the people of the United States that this thing is properly finished and that will be through the bottom."

Friday marks the 109th day since the environmental disaster started with the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon that sank the rig and killed 11 workers.

Oil flowed relentlessly for nearly three months, as BP tried various methods to cap the runaway well, until it finally placed a tightly fitting cap on it in mid-July. That opened the door for the efforts now under way to permanently seal it.

While the cementing could potentially plug the well for good, Allen is instructing BP to proceed with a final "bottom kill." That's when more mud and cement will be poured into the well through one of two relief wells. The bottom kill amounts to an insurance policy.

Two relief wells are being drilled so one can act as a backup if the first one misses the mark. The main well is about 100 feet from BP's oil well, and the drilling job is expected to be completed in mid-August.

Despite the optimistic notes being sounded about killing the well, the long-term cleanup is another matter.

The federal government's on-scene coordinator, Rear. Adm. Paul Zukunft, said Thursday it's possible that tar balls may be washing ashore for years.

A government report released this week concluded that of the nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil that spilled into the Gulf when the well was out of control, roughly a quarter of it remains in the water either on or just below the surface as a light sheen and weathered tar balls.

The rest has been collected by skimming ships, burned on the surface, broken up by dispersants or evaporated.

The tar balls are either washing ashore, being collected from the coastlines, or buried in sand and sediment, and are in the process of being degraded, the report said.

Source : CNN

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