Oil company BP is today planning to lower a containment dome down to the seabed today to collect crude spewing from a damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico.
The 40-foot-tall steel box weighs about 100 metric tons and will be used as part of an effort to seal two remaining leaks, the company said. One of three leaks was contained yesterday after crews successfully closed a valve installed May 4th.
Oil has been gushing at the rate of more than 5,000 barrels a day from the well, roughly 64 kilometres off the southeastern tip of Louisiana, since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank on April 20th. The explosion and fire killed 11 workers, sank the vessel and caused three leaks in pipes attached to the Macondo well about 1,524 metres below the sea surface.
The underwater containment structure on the well should be working by May 10th and will seek to capture 85 per cent of the oil and pipe it to a ship on the surface, BP said yesterday. The technology has never been tried at such depth, however.
BP plans to circulate warm surface water and antifreeze around the pipe to prevent clogging in the pipes at the depth. A relief well to block off the flow of oil from the reservoir was begun on May 2nd and is expected to take about three months to complete, the company said today.
Bloomberg