Deep water horizon response TO top kill
Q: Hi, Admiral. Some of the contractors are saying that they are very close and that at this point they actually have located the wellbore, they're within several feet. Can you talk to us about what progress they have done since the last update?
ADMIRAL ALLEN: I believe they are at about 15 feet away from the wellbore at this time. Yesterday, they had about 264 feet to go. I've been out here on the drill rigs today, so I'm not up to date on the progress. My guess is they're closing in on about 200 feet, maybe 225 feet yet to go.
This is a very slow, precise process, where they drill only 15 or 20 feet at a time, and then they put the wire down to test the magnetic field. You are correct. They are very, very close. But these last several hundred feet can take sometimes a week to make sure they get this right, because when they go to penetrate it, as you know, this has to be an exact drill into the wellbore.
Q: So as a follow-up, you said yesterday it looks like it's about a week ahead of schedule. Where do you think we are now? There are some reports that maybe within a couple of weeks they will reach their target.
ADMIRAL ALLEN: The time it will take to do thisthe reason it is unknown right now and I'm not willing to come off the mid-August deadline is, if they have to pump mud up through the annulus and then go into the pipe and pump mud there, too, that's a period of seven, 10 days to accomplish both of those things. And if they have to be done in sequence because of the condition of the wellbore when they go in, it will probably take into August, so we're looking at optimal conditions on what they find when they penetrate the wellbore.
So while it's nice to be slightly ahead of schedule, I'm sticking to the middle of August, because we don't know the condition of the wellbore until we penetrate her.
deep water horizon response