BP oil relief well near completion as Gulf storm moves near

At last, the first BP oil relief well at the Gulf Deepwater Horizon spill is only a few days away from completion, however newly forming storm could delay operations once again.

If bad weather over the Caribbean strengthens and then moves to the site in the Gulf of Mexico, ships will have to be withdrawn, meaning no work on the relief well for up to two weeks.

There is a 60% chance that a weather pattern currently over the island of Hispaniola will turn into a cyclone within the next 48 hours, the US National Hurricane Center says.

A final piece of casing needs to be cemented in place at the bottom of the relief well before it can then drill into the damaged well.

A static kill operation means pumping mud or, what BP calls “specialised heavy liquid”, into the blowout preventer that sits on top of the well, then forcing cement in to seal the well shut.

The temporary cap remains in place, with oil still seeping into the ocean floor, but engineers have decided that the risk of a of a bigger blowout was minimal and were getting closer to pumping mud into the column to permanently seal it.

“The relief well is exactly where we want it, pointed in the right direction. So we’re feeling good about that,” Wells said. “The intercept of the Macondo well is still for the end of July and then the kill procedure, dependent upon whether we have flow up the annulus casing or both, could take anywhere from a number of days to a few weeks.”