re: Oil Has Stopped Leaking Into Gulf for First Time Since Spill

I only caught the tail end of it. Somebody asked him if this was a time for celebration. He handled that quite well, I thought. He said no way. He said when there's been a disaster like this including loss of life, destruction to the environment, damage to people's livelihood, even if the cap holds, you don't celebrate that. There's still a lot of work to do but he did express hope that a corner has been turned in this whole thing.

Pretty freaking amazing the difference between Suttles and Hayward when dealing with the press.

Suttles is ok in my book....Hayward on the other hand is a total douche....

I think Ken Wells is going to get courted to an ExxonMobil or Shell or Chevron, COP etc and go to work there. He has great experience on stuff that no one has now. Very valuable to another firm. I think the BP office in Houston if they pinch BP for 7 years is in trouble.

Same here. Things that would bug the shite out of me he handles in stride. Back9 brings up a good point. He probably sees these updates as job interviews.

Hi Gang.

Like everyone else, I'm REALLY hoping that the current tests will have some very positive results. And along these lines, I wonder if some of you folks might be able to enlighten us newbies about just how they're going about testing everything.

That is, now that the oil flow has been completely stopped, how can different types of tests be carried out on the current configuration? Are they applying any kinds of downward pressure pulses on the BOP and/or oil column?

I ask this because Kent Wells mentioned in the PM press briefing that everyone has worked very hard to design this testing procedure so that they could obtain as much info as possible. And since I don't know diddly about the kinds of different tests that might be possible with this set-up, I'd definitely be curious to hear some educated guesstimates and/or explanations.

Since we're coming up on the 4 hour mark since the column was shut off, one would certainly think that they've already gotten a pretty good idea of the current pressures within the oil column. And as long as there hasn't been any type of ruptures, cracks, etc. on the sea floor, I'm cautiously optimistic that they just might make it through the rest of the evening without any more serious glitches.

Sure would be nice to get some more of those very special "insider" reports that were being leaked to us several weeks ago.

And thanks for any info that some of you might be able to offer to the rest of us.

Tom, if you've been following Kent's 2-a-day updates you probably know everything I do. What they will be looking at is the pressure within the stack and perhaps more importantly, how it changes over time. Ideally what they would be wanting to see is a gradual increase in pressure as they were choking back. Once the choke was completely closed, they want to see a pressure in the range of 8-9000 psi. This indicates that the well is holding. Further, they want to see that pressure remain steady over a long period of time. If it fluctuates or drops, it probably indicates a leak or rupture somewhere. Exactly how the fluctuation occurs will probably give them some indication as to the type of failure and where it is occurring. If they see that the pressure doesn't hold or if it drops suddenly then something has probably burst and they will immediately abandon the test and resume collection.

Keep in mind that this is a test and its goal is to learn more about the well. Whether the pressure holds or not, they will accomplish this either way. Of course we all want it to hold but we shouldn't consider the test a failure if that doesn't happen. In that eventuality, the well failed but the test didn't. It did what it was supposed to do.

With that said, I think the first few hours were the most critical. If the well was going to fail, it most likely would have done so soon after the pressure increased. That's not to say we're out of the woods by any means but I think we're past the first hurdle. Let's hope their luck holds out; Lord knows they're due for some.

Edit: back9 also brought up a good point about the sonar survey. Prior to the test they did a sonar survey to establish a baseline. Now they can compare the current sonar readings to the baseline to see if anything has changed.

Let's keep this fricker plugged up!

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Every time he opened his mouth, there goes his foot.

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dont know why, but i found that hilarious

Just occurred to me that the ROV cams are a lot more boring now.

Here's to boring!