While the shape that the end was going to take was never in doubt, and while oil had not leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since the middle of July, National Incident
Commander Thad Allen said in a prepared statement today that intersection and cementing of the well had been completed, and "we can finally announce that the Macondo 252 well is effectively dead."
"Additional regulatory steps will be undertaken but we can now state, definitively, that the Macondo well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico," he said in the statement.
The time of death was placed at 5:54 Central time (1054 GMT), when the cement pressure test on the relief well that intersected the original blowout well was completed.
While Allen is head of the National Incident Command, he said that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement also has confirmed that the cementing of the well was successful, and confirmed that pressure tests "verify integrity of the (cement) plugs." The National Incident Command is passing over oversight of the well to the BOEM.
"We insisted that BP develop robust redundancy measures to ensure that each step was part of a deliberate plan, driven by science, minimizing risk to ensure we did not inflict additional harm in our efforts to kill the well," Allen said in his statement. "I commend the response personnel, both from the government and private sectors, for seeing this vital procedure through to the end. And although the well is now dead, we remain committed to continue aggressive efforts to clean up any additional oil we may see going forward."
China Chemical Weekly: http://news.chemnet.com/en/detail-1411716.html
