At 1 p.m. today, BP pulled the trigger on the "top kill," pumping thousands of pounds of heavy fluids into a five-story stack of pipes in an attempt to clog the well and stop the Gulf oil spill. They might not know if it worked for a couple of days, but you can watch via the spill cam. Meanwhile, hearings into what caused the April 20th explosion proceeded today, and we are getting closer to knowing the name of one of the guys on the rig most responsible for the catastrophe. The Times reports that a chief mechanic for the Deepwater Horizon rig "testified that he witnessed a 'skirmish' between an official of BP, which leased the rig, and Transocean, the owner and operator, on the morning of the explosion."
The mechanic, Douglas H. Brown, described a “skirmish” or “slight argument” on the rig between the BP well site leader (whom he referred to as “the company man”) and Transocean officials, including the offshore installation manager, or O.I.M. The exact details of the argument were not known, but it followed BP’s decision to replace heavy drilling fluid with lighter saltwater before the well was sealed with cement plugs.
“The driller was outlining what would be taking place, whereupon the company man stood up and said, ‘No, we’ll be having some changes to that,’ ” Mr. Brown said. “The O.I.M., tool-pusher and driller disagreed with that, but the company man said, ‘Well, this is how it’s going to be,’ and the tool-pusher, driller and O.I.M. reluctantly agreed.”
A former Coast Guard captain tells the Times, "You’re always going to have a conflict between the people that are representing the owners of the rig and the people that are renting it. The people that are renting it want to go faster and drill, and the people that own the rig want to maintain the integrity of the rig."
In other dire news, forecasters are now predicting that meteorological conditions "will rival or exceed 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. They say El Nino in the Pacific is weakening and rain is keeping dust down in Africa—both factors that could accelerate the strength and frequency of hurricanes this summer. Already, sea temperatures from the Cape Verde Islands to the Caribbean, where storms develop, are above normal or at record levels." In a worst case scenario, BP will not be able to stop the oil flow for several months, by drilling a second well through 13,000 feet of rock to intercept the damaged well and pump in cement.
