A low pressure area in the Caribbean has turned into an official tropical depression. It is below the Yucatan Peninsula, heading generally toward Texas.
The BP video feeds have gone dead. Even with a minor storm, what they are doing now could get very dangerous very fast.
The freestanding riser for the containment cap is not in place. There are a group of ships “way too close” to each other – the two drilling ships drilling the relief wells, the Explorer running the containment cap, a tanker to offload the oil from the Enterprise, the Q4000 running the secondary flaring operation through the kill/choke connections in the BOP, the Skandia spraying dispersants.
That’s fine when the seas are calm – but the drill ships have to stay directly over the drill sites using thrusters. The other ships will tend to drift with the wave action and wind. If the currents shift, the spewing oil and gas might suddenly start surfacing in a different location.
The first relief well was at 16,000 feet deep a week ago. The intersection is planned for 18,000 feet, which probably is another 10 days away. At the point they break into the casing of the bad well, that drill ship is pretty much committed to riding out any storm. If it disconnects from the relief well, that well’s BOP will have to seal off the relief well, making it unusable. The last thing we need is two spewing wells.
