Weather complicates effort to permanently kill leaking Gulf well
Specialists plugged the leak by pumping drilling mud into the 40-year-old Energy Resource Technology well late Thursday, roughly four days after it first started discharging a briny mix of gas, light condensate and salt water.
“The flow from the well was completely stopped yesterday evening before dark,” said David Blackmon, a spokesman for ERT, a newly acquired subsidiary of Houston-based Talos Energy. “They’ve been monitoring the well overnight, per guidance from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.”
The next phase in the operation may begin later today, if regulators at the Interior Department bureau approve plans to pump cement into the shallow-water well, permanently sealing it off. But thunderstorms and lightning in the area may slow operations.
The damage from the episode is likely to be minimal, chiefly because the old, slow-flowing gas well was already on the verge of retirement. It last produced gas commercially more than a decade ago, and Talos Energy was in the process of permanently plugging and abandoning the well when fluid first started escaping on Sunday. Although it was briefly brought back under control, the leak began again Monday morning.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/07/12/leaking-gulf-well-brought-under-control/
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