Mud operation finally plugs BP well

A crush of mud finally plugged BP’S blown-out well, three months after the offshore drilling rig explosion that unleashed a gush of oil and a summer of misery along the Gulf Coast.

But the US government stopped just short of pronouncing the well dead, warning that cement and mud must still be pumped in from the bottom to seal it off for good.

President Barack Obama declared that the battle to contain one of the world’s worst oil spills was “finally close to coming to an end”.

Yet after months of living with lost income, fouled shorelines and dying wildlife, some Gulf Coast residents were not so sure.

Still, it appeared there might finally be an end in sight to the disaster that closed vast stretches of fishing areas, interrupted the usually lucrative tourist season, and cost BP’s chief executive his job and the company’s shareholders billions of pounds.

BP said 2,300 barrels of mud forced down the well overnight – an operation called a “static kill” – had pushed the crude back down to its source for the first time since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded off Louisiana on April 20. The explosion killed 11 workers and began the spill that sent tar balls washing on to beaches and oil oozing into delicate coastal marshes.

Early today National Incident Commander Thad Allen said he approved BP’s plan to begin forcing cement down the well as long as it did not delay work on the relief well. BP officials said they planned to begin pumping cement today.

And there was more seemingly good news when a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report claimed that only about 30% of the spilled oil remained in the Gulf and was degrading quickly.

The rest had been contained or cleaned up or otherwise disappeared, and the report also said the oil no longer posed a threat to the Florida Keys or the East Coast.

But some independent experts said they were concerned that the government’s method of estimating the amount was too simple for such a complex spill – and even government scientists warned the rosy numbers did not mean the Gulf was out of harm’s way.

Government officials said they will not declare complete victory until mud and cement is pumped in from the bottom to seal the well, a procedure that might not be done for weeks.

“We’re in a good place today, but we want to get it permanent over the near term, whether that’s days or weeks,” said Kent Wells, BP senior vice president, who avoided saying the static kill had finished the job.

Asked when he would be able to say the well is dead, he replied: “I’m looking forward to that day.”

An experimental cap had stopped the oil from flowing for the past three weeks, but it was not a permanent solution. Before it was lowered, the government estimated that 172 million gallons of oil had flowed into the Gulf.

Before that, BP tried a series of often-absurd sounding contraptions, raising hopes only to dash them when those efforts failed. They included a giant 100-ton containment box that got clogged with ice-like crystals and the so-called junk shot, an attempt to clog up the well with golf balls and rubber scraps.

The apparent success of the static kill had some along the Gulf curious about why BP waited so long to try it.

But the static kill – also known as bullheading – probably would not have worked without the cap in place.

It involved slowly pumping the mud from a ship down lines running to the top of the ruptured well a mile below, and a similar effort failed in May when the mud could not overcome the flow of oil.

Workers stopped pumping mud in after about eight hours of static kill work and were monitoring the well to ensure it remained stable, BP said.

Even politicians expressed concern that BP and the US government will need to stay focused on the clean-up and long-term monitoring of the Gulf’s marine life.

“This is a positive step,” said Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal.

“But this crisis is not over for Louisiana until the well is permanently capped and our coasts and wetlands are fully restored to their pre-spill status and our people can resume their way of life.”