Storm system delays work on relief well

ATLANTA – The effort to permanently kill BP’s Gulf well, originally set for the end of this week, has been delayed several days by the approach of a tropical storm system, officials said Tuesday.

BP has suspended drilling of a relief well, now less than 50 feet from the bottom of the blown-out well, and doesn’t expect to hit the damaged well until sometime between Sunday and Tuesday of next week.

“There is going to be a delay of two to three days as we wait for the weather system to pass over, in an overabundance of caution, to make sure we don’t cause any further problems down there,” said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national spill response chief.

Although drilling ships were evacuated in late July when another storm hit the spill area about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, such an evacuation will not be necessary this time. The drilling bit will be pulled up, but the equipment will remain at the site. The system was hovering off the Florida coast in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday afternoon and was expected to reach the well site by late today.

Accuweather.com predicted the system “will probably never become a hurricane,” but will likely bring torrential downpours, high winds and rough seas.

Before the company resumes the relief drilling, engineers said they will conduct a pressure test that should give them more information on the condition of the annulus, the area between the well’s inner casing and its rock edge.

Last week, the company jammed cement down the casing from the top of the well. But engineers are unsure if the cement made its way all the way down to the oil reservoir, or into the annulus.

“What we don’t know is exactly what we’ll find in the annulus,” said BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells. “It could be mud, it could be oil, it could be cement. … That’s what we’re trying to get a little more insight in, when we do this test.”

Although Allen has long maintained that plugging the original well with mud and cement from the bottom, via the relief well, would be the “ultimate” solution, the pressure test may indicate that last week’s cementing has already achieved that goal.

Since a mechanical cap shut down the well leak in mid-July, surface slicks have continued to shrink, leaving more of the Gulf free of any visible surface oil.

On Tuesday the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reopened part of the Gulf to commercial and recreational fishing more than 5,000 square miles off the Florida coast. At the peak of fishing bans, NOAA had closed 37 percent of federal Gulf waters. Now, about 22 percent remains closed.