New Orleans: British energy giant BP stopped the oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday for the first time in three months as it began key tests hoping to stem the spill for good.
Shortly after BP engineers shut down the last of three valves on a giant new cap placed on the blown-out well at around 2:25 pm (1925 GMT), senior vice president Kent Wells announced no oil was leaking into the seas.
"I'm very excited to see no oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico," Wells told reporters, but cautioned it was only the start of a painstaking testing process set to last 48 hours to analyse the condition of the underground wellbore.
The announcement was the first sign of real hope for desperate coastal residents who have had their livelihoods ravaged by the worst environmental disaster in the nation's history, now in its 13th week.
Tourists deterred
Teeming fishing grounds have been closed and tourists have been scared away — two vital economic lifelines for the southern region still struggling to recover from the 2005 Hurricane Katrina.
Endangered wildlife has also been increasingly threatened by huge ribbons of oil fouling the shores of five states — Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The costly, massive clean-up is likely to last years.
US President Barack Obama, whose administration has led pressure on BP to stop the oil flow, welcomed the news of the capped well as "a positive sign," but cautioned: "We're still in the testing phase." He said he would address the issue again yesterday.
BP's chief operating officer Doug Suttles also warned it was not yet time to celebrate, saying more time was needed as the tests are completed.
"I think it's an encouraging sign. In a couple of more days it may even be more encouraging, but no celebrations," Suttles told reporters. "If you go talk to these people that live here, celebration is the wrong word."
The tests are intended to determine whether the wellbore, which stretches 2.5 miles (four kilometres) below the seabed, was damaged during an April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, which sank two days later.
BP is hoping to choke off the oil flow from the well, estimated at between 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day. But doing so from the top could force oil out in new leaks if the wellbore was damaged.
During the test, engineers will take multiple readings from the 30-foot (nine-metre) capping stack placed on top of the wellhead on Monday to monitor the pressure inside.
High pressure readings would allow the three valves to remain shut and the well would effectively be sealed, but low readings could mean there is a hole somewhere in the casing of the well where oil is escaping.
"Over the next several hours we will continue to collect data and work with the federal science team to analyse this information and perform additional seismic mapping runs in the hopes of gaining a better understanding on the condition of the well bore and options for temporary shut in of the well during a hurricane," said the official in charge of the US response, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen. After 48 hours, the engineers will open up the system again and begin capturing the oil through two surface vessels to allow a new seismic survey to be carried out, Allen said.
The two oil containment vessels, the Q4000 and the Helix Producer, were shut down before the test started.
Containment
Then, "it remains likely that we will return to the containment process using this new stacking cap connected to the risers to attempt to collect up to 80,000 barrels of oil per day until the relief well is completed," he added.
A final solution to the leak is not expected before mid-August, when crews will complete the first of two relief wells, allowing the oil reservoir to be permanently plugged in a "kill" operation.
Obama and his administration are being kept up to date, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, is involved in the consultations every six hours during the integrity test, alongside BP and government scientists.
New Orleans (AP) Many Gulf Coast residents don't believe it. Some accuse BP of making it up. And even those convinced that the oil leak has finally been stopped are tempered in their relief, aware that their environmental nightmare is far from over.
"It's a beautiful thing that it's shut off," trumpeter Shamarr Allen said as he stood on the sidewalk in the Musicians' Village in New Orleans' Upper Ninth Ward. "But there's still a lot of years of cleaning. There's going to be a lot of no fishing still. It's only the beginning of a long road that we have to travel. It's only the first step."
Distrust
Reaction to the news that BP PLC had cut off the flow from the blown well nearly three months after an oil-rig explosion was marked with deep distrust of the oil giant. Gulf Coast residents have suffered from months of false starts and dashed hopes, failed "top kills" and abortive "junk shots," containment domes and "top hats," as they watched the biggest offshore oil spill in US history foul their shores and eat into their livelihoods.
"It's a [expletive] lie," shouted Stephon LaFrance, one of several oil-stained oystermen standing around a marina in marshy Plaquemines Parish. "I don't believe they stopped that leak. BP's trying to make their self look good."
Sitting on a boat, his cousin, Louie Randy Barthelemy, looked up and said: "BP's trying to manipulate the media."
"It doesn't mean anything," Craig St. Amant said as he tried to sell tours to passers-by on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. "They tell you what they want you to hear. I don't think they're being truthful in saying what they're saying." Even those who believed what they were seeing on the live video feeds from the school of submersibles surrounding the damaged well head were having a hard time getting excited about this milestone.
At a dock in Hopedale, Louisiana, Roy Campo's crew was unloading and boxing blue crabs — their first in about a week because of closures. When they heard the news, the most the men could muster was a nod.
"The oil's still out there, so it'll be a while," said Campo, 50.
Deckhand Manuel Meyer grinned, but his tone was sombre.
"It feels good, but I mean, the damage is already done. That's the problem," said Meyer, 38. "I mean, they can clean it up, but they finding oil popping up everywhere, and how did it get where it's at? ... It's gonna continue for several years, several years, and it ain't gonna do nothing but get worse before it gets better."
Corner turned
Others on the Gulf Coast do believe that their region has finally turned a corner in this creeping disaster.
"It's freaking wonderful," said Gary Kiger, a 39-year-old shrimper from Cutoff, Louisiana.
Kiger has been involved in the clean-up from the beginning, working and living on his boat out in the Gulf.
Looking down a pier of trawlers loaded with boom and vacuum equipment instead of nets, Kiger said he was ready to get back to hauling shrimp.
"It's a living hell, you know. Everywhere you look there's oil and tar," he said. "It'll drive you crazy, make you want to put a bullet in your head."
The cap placed on the blown well in the past week is only a temporary fix. BP's permanent fix, a relief well, is still days or even weeks from being completed, and a hurricane in the wrong place could set that timetable back.
"We need to be cautious here," said BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles. He said the capped well is "a great sight, but it's far from the finish line."
And let's face it: If BP CEO Tony Hayward said it was raining, most Gulf Coast residents would stick their heads out the window to check for themselves.
"Let's wait to see what an outside source has to say about the leak," a man named Rick Cortez posted on the Facebook page called "The 1,000,000 people who wonder why BP's still in charge of the oil spill." "BP [equals] ZERO credibility!!"
Some of the doubts that the leak has really been stopped appear to have sprung from glitches in the live feed from the Gulf floor. Some people complained that the video went out just as the oil stopped flowing, but an Associated Press reporter in Houston was able to view live footage of the shutoff the moment it happened Thursday at 2:25pm local time.
Shares surge after news of spill stop
BP Plc surged as much as 6.2 per cent in London trading after the company stopped the flow of oil for the first time.
BP rose as far as 426.45 pence, the highest since June 8, before trading at 424 pence as of 8:07am local time. That's 40 per cent higher than the 14-year low reached last month following the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20.
The producer is evaluating data from a pressure test it began Thursday that will determine whether the oil well can remain sealed. BP is drilling two relief wells to permanently plug the leak at the same time.
"While this is clearly good news, we caution that closing the well is actually the start of the tests not the conclusion, and BP needs to see pressure maintained," said Peter Hutton, an analyst at NCB Stockbrokers Ltd. He raised his recommendation on the shares to "buy" from "hold."
Confirmation that the well had been sealed sent BP's US shares up as much as 10 per cent in New York trading on Thursday.
