Tropical storm Alex will delay the 25,000 b/d expansion of BP's Macondo well production system by up to a week, the company said today.
But BP will continue to collect around 24,000 b/d from the well through two vessels at the site, and it will keep drilling two relief wells to permanently stop the flow of oil, BP senior vice president of exploration and production Kent Wells said in a briefing for reporters.
BP has three days of work left to bring into operation a new floating riser pipe that will send oil from the original Macondo well's blowout preventer stack to a third production vessel on the surface, but that work requires a relatively flat sea state, Wells said. When tropical storm Alex passes through the Gulf of Mexico on a course toward Mexico or Texas, wave heights could rise from 3-4 ft to 10-12 ft.
The delay could be six to seven days, Wells said.
Yesterday BP recovered 24,450 bl of oil, bringing the total of oil recovered directly from the well since May to 460,000 bl.
BP pulls oil from the well using two vessels: The Discoverer Enterprise receives and stores crude through a riser connected to a containment cap resting on top of the well's blowout preventer stack. The Q4000 burns off oil it receives from a connection to a line on the side of the blowout preventer.
The addition of the new riser, which will connect to another line on the blowout preventer, will allow BP to connect a third, 20-25,000 b/d production vessel called the Helix Producer and raise production capacity to around 50,000 b/d. With the storm delay, that system is on track to come on line around 6 or 7 July, Wells said.
Once the new riser and production vessel are in place, BP will look to replace the existing cap on the blowout preventer with one that could have a strong enough seal to choke back or shut in the well depending on what the pressure response is, Wells said. It will take potentially a few weeks to prepare for the new seal, he said.
As a contingency for the relief well operations, BP is considering a plan in which the new seal would be connected to an existing nearby production platform. When asked what platform this system would connect to, Wells said BP is looking at a couple different options and declined to identify the possible platforms.
The first of two relief wells aimed at stopping the source of the massive oil spill is around 20 ft away from the original Macondo well at a depth of 16,770 ft below the Gulf's surface, Wells said. The company is conducting a series of what are called ranging operations using electromagnetic fields to track the location of the original well. BP will drill vertically an additional 1,000 ft parallel to the Macondo well before intercepting it near its base at around 18,000 ft and injecting mud.
The operation has gone very well and BP still expects to finish in early August, Wells said. BP began drilling the first relief well on 2 May and began drilling the second on 16 May. The company has said each well would take around three months to complete.
We're now in the precision part, Wells said. There's no guarantee everything's going to go exactly as planned.
But BP will continue to collect around 24,000 b/d from the well through two vessels at the site, and it will keep drilling two relief wells to permanently stop the flow of oil, BP senior vice president of exploration and production Kent Wells said in a briefing for reporters.
BP has three days of work left to bring into operation a new floating riser pipe that will send oil from the original Macondo well's blowout preventer stack to a third production vessel on the surface, but that work requires a relatively flat sea state, Wells said. When tropical storm Alex passes through the Gulf of Mexico on a course toward Mexico or Texas, wave heights could rise from 3-4 ft to 10-12 ft.
The delay could be six to seven days, Wells said.
Yesterday BP recovered 24,450 bl of oil, bringing the total of oil recovered directly from the well since May to 460,000 bl.
BP pulls oil from the well using two vessels: The Discoverer Enterprise receives and stores crude through a riser connected to a containment cap resting on top of the well's blowout preventer stack. The Q4000 burns off oil it receives from a connection to a line on the side of the blowout preventer.
The addition of the new riser, which will connect to another line on the blowout preventer, will allow BP to connect a third, 20-25,000 b/d production vessel called the Helix Producer and raise production capacity to around 50,000 b/d. With the storm delay, that system is on track to come on line around 6 or 7 July, Wells said.
Once the new riser and production vessel are in place, BP will look to replace the existing cap on the blowout preventer with one that could have a strong enough seal to choke back or shut in the well depending on what the pressure response is, Wells said. It will take potentially a few weeks to prepare for the new seal, he said.
As a contingency for the relief well operations, BP is considering a plan in which the new seal would be connected to an existing nearby production platform. When asked what platform this system would connect to, Wells said BP is looking at a couple different options and declined to identify the possible platforms.
The first of two relief wells aimed at stopping the source of the massive oil spill is around 20 ft away from the original Macondo well at a depth of 16,770 ft below the Gulf's surface, Wells said. The company is conducting a series of what are called ranging operations using electromagnetic fields to track the location of the original well. BP will drill vertically an additional 1,000 ft parallel to the Macondo well before intercepting it near its base at around 18,000 ft and injecting mud.
The operation has gone very well and BP still expects to finish in early August, Wells said. BP began drilling the first relief well on 2 May and began drilling the second on 16 May. The company has said each well would take around three months to complete.
We're now in the precision part, Wells said. There's no guarantee everything's going to go exactly as planned.
