Offshore staff
ROGER, Louisiana – One near-term and one long-term risk surrounding operations to kill the well at the Deepwater Horizon spill site are of concern to the Coast Guard, according to the new incident commander Admiral Thad Allen.
In the near-term, the containment placement plan under way calls for cutting the riser which is expected to increase the rate of flow of oil from the well until the containment cap is installed.
“We have discussed with British Petroleum mitigating measures regarding undersea dispersant use and so forth,” Allen said at a press conference yesterday. “The fact of the matter is there will be a period of time where there will be hydrocarbons coming out of the well while we cut the pipe, remove it, and put the cap, or the ‘top cap’ in place.”
The long-term concern involves hurricane season.
“As we move into hurricane season, we are going to be producing oil and of this well…because that is the way we are going to relieve the pressure,” Allen said. “That means we are going to have to have a way to consider heavy weather, hurricane weather, and what to do about that.”
He continued to say that one approach to this problem that is under study is an FPSO that can move offsite in the event of sufficiently bad weather. “Those plans are being finalized right now, and over the course of the next couple of days, I will be glad to give you some more information on that,” he said.
“We need to understand what are the conditions, how long can we stay out there, how quickly do we redeploy it back, and do we have a way to do things like treat the oil that will be coming out with subsea dispersants?. (Those plans are) to be developed as we move forward.”
He also took time to characterize the oil in the water now, saying that this is “not a huge, monolithic oil slick” rather it is a group of smaller slicks of various sizes scattered over about a 200-mi radius.
06/02/2010
