Thank You again BP!

The image of oil gushing from a broken well in the Gulf of Mexico was destroyed when a well cap was put on top of the well a month and a half ago. Engineers weren't expecting to see that image again. Thursday, when they planned to remove the cap as a beginning to raise the massive piece of equipment in the Gulf that failed to prevent the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. But the government wasn't offering a guarantee that no oil would leak. Plans were being made for oil collecting ships to be standing by in case of a problem. With the cap and failed leak preventer removed temporarily until another leak preventer can be put in, a lot will be balanced on the strength of a plug that was created when mud and cement were pumped down into the well. Essentially, the pressure pushed downward served to cancel the pressure coming up. But Rice University engineer professor George Hirasaki quoted "... there is still uncertainty about whether the cement settled everywhere it needed to in order to keep oil and gas from finding its way up. Just because it didn't flow when they tested it doesn't mean the cement displaced all of the oil and gas, " Hirasaki said "that's why many people have felt that finishing the relief well was the ultimate solution to the crisis." He was involved in the oil containment effort in the Bay of Marchland field off Louisiana after a well burned in the early 1970's. The government still plans on ordering BPPLC to do the so-called bottom kill operation. But it believes the wisest course is to put on a new leak preventer first to deal with any pressure that is caused when the relief well intersects the broken well.

-Robert Obourn