BREAKING - FOX NEWS Television reporting oil gusher might still be going 6 months from now. August is best case scenario.

9000 days is what was admitted before, 24 years!

It took 9 months and SEVERAL relief wells to cap the 1979 Ixtoc spill.

I've been saying 2011 all along.

This is all a show to make you think BP is doing something.

are we believing fox all of a sudden?

Keep in mind that a relief well has never been dug at this depth so one must put the chances of this being the solution into perspective.

[link to www.nola.com]

But relief wells are something that, fortunately, engineers don't have to do very often. Drilling the relief well also can be fraught with challenges -- especially working in deep water on a well that has already had problems with gas bubbles.

"You have to hit something the size of a dinner plate miles into the earth, " said Richard Charter, a senior policy adviser at the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife, who follows spills around the world. "Even in a shallow-water blowout, the drilling of a relief well can be complicated and problematic."

I'm linking other sources that confirm the relief well effort will face its own set of challenges which could mean many months beyond August.

Sooner or later they must accept that the Soviet method is the only sollution.

Yah it took 9mos to clean that spill up and did the oceans die or Mexico become extinct? I agree this blows harder than anything I've ever seen but, I've only been here 40 yrs. The earth will recover, we may not like what we have to deal with for years but, it'll recover. So no to 2011 based on the Gulf spill.

Yah cause Rachel Maddow is so objective.

Isn't it funny how the oil spill is now old news on the major networks?

so she's the one we should be listening to?

i'm so confused.

anderson cooper has been the only one that seems legit on the whole oil situation so far.

Duh ....

I have been saying almost continuously that the EARLIEST that they can even consider utilizing the relief wells to cap this thing is going to be around Labor Day ... and that of course is "IF" they aren't bothered by ANY hurricanes AND the relief wells being drilled go nearly perfectly.

ANY hurricanes in the area will set back the drilling operations probably by about 2 to 3 weeks FOR EACH hurricane (need to seal what is drilled, pull up the pipe, go away, come back, put the pipe back down, drill out the seal, continue drilling)

Drilling in hurricane season of course could have it's own set of problems with possibly a second well leaking ... but for the moment let's not even go in that direction.

if you listen to any of the mainstream media then you're a sheep. i watch msnbc because im progressive and know what im going to get with it. If i wanted to make myself angry and yell at the tv then i would watch fox news. just formulate your own opinions.

For the FOXNEWS haters hear is the opposite end of the spectrum MSNBC.

[link to www.msnbc.msn.com]

The best hope for stopping the flow of oil from the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico has been compared to hitting a target the size of a dinner plate more than two miles into the earth, and is anything but a sure bet on the first attempt.

Bid after bid has failed to stanch what has already become the nation's worst-ever spill, and BP PLC is readying another attempt as early as Wednesday to capture the oil, this one a cut-and-cap process.

But the best-case scenario of sealing the leak is two relief wells being drilled diagonally into the gushing well — tricky business that won't be ready until August.

"The probability of them hitting it on the very first shot is virtually nil," said David Rensink, incoming president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, who spent most of his 39 years in the oil industry in offshore exploration. "If they get it on the first three or four shots they'd be very lucky."

Trial-and-error process could take weeks
For the bid to succeed, the bore hole must precisely intersect the damaged well. If it misses, BP will have to back up its drill, plug the hole it just created, and try again.

The trial-and-error process could take weeks, but it will eventually work, scientists and BP said. Then engineers will then pump mud and cement through pipes to ultimately seal the well.

In a statement issued Tuesday, BP said "preliminary operations" were being carried out to cut away the existing, damaged riser and deploy the cap or lower marine riser package (LMRP).

"All of these operations, including the cutting of the riser, are complex, involve risks and uncertainties, and have to be carried out by ROVs at 5,000 feet under water," it added.

"Systems such as the LMRP containment cap have never before been deployed at these depths and conditions, and their efficiency and ability to contain the oil and gas cannot be assured," the statement said. "It is currently anticipated that attachment of the LMRP cap will be attempted later this week; however, operational delays could impact anticipated timeframes."

The statement said work on the first relief well, which started on May 2, was continuing and it had reached a depth of 12,090 feet, BP said.

The second relief well, which started on May 16, had reached 8,576 feet before drilling was temporarily suspended on May 26, but it has now resumed. Both wells are still estimated to take around three months to complete from commencement of drilling, BP said.

As the drilling reaches deeper into the earth, the process is slowed by building pressure and the increasing distance that well casings must travel before they can be set in place.

BP said it had so far spent about $990 million on the spill response, containment, relief well drilling, grants to the Gulf states, federal costs and claims paid.

"So far approximately 30,000 claims have been submitted and more than 15,000 payments already have been made, totaling some $40 million," the statement said. "BP has received more than 110,000 calls into its help lines to date."


Video: Hospitals prepare for oil-related illness


Quicker than usual
The three months it could take to finish the relief wells is quicker than a typical deep well, which can take four months or longer, said Tad Patzek, chair of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas-Austin. BP already has a good picture of the different layers of sand and rock its drill bits will meet because of the work it did on the blown-out well.

On the slim chance the relief well doesn't work, scientists weren't sure exactly how much — or how long — the oil would flow. The gusher would continue until the well bore hole collapsed or pressure in the reservoir dropped to a point where oil was no longer pushed to the surface, Patzak said.

"I don't admit the possibility of it not working," he said.

A third well could be drilled if the first two fail.
"We don't know how much oil is down there, and hopefully we'll never know when the relief wells work," BP spokesman John Curry said.

The company was starting to collect and analyze data on how much oil might be in the reservoir when the rig exploded April 20, he said.


Drilling technology has improved
BP's uncertainty statement is reasonable, given they only had drilled one well, according to Doug Rader, an ocean scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund.


Video: Obama critics: Make BP responsible


Two relief wells stopped the world's worst peacetime spill, from a Mexican rig called Ixtoc 1 that eventually dumped 140 million gallons off the Yucatan Peninsula.

That took nearly 10 months beginning in the summer of 1979. Drilling technology has vastly improved since then, however.

So far, the Gulf oil spill has leaked between 19.7 million and 43 million gallons, according to government estimates.

BP's cut-and-cap procedure will likely, at least temporarily, cause 20 percent more oil — at least 100,000 gallons a day — to add to the gusher.

"If you've got to cut that riser, that's risky. You could take a bad situation and make it worse," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences.

BP failed to plug the leak Saturday with its 'top kill' procedure, which shot mud and pieces of rubber into the well but couldn't beat back the pressure of oil.

The location of the spill couldn't be worse.


'It's just killing us by degrees'
To the south lies an essential spawning ground for imperiled Atlantic bluefin tuna and sperm whales. To the east and west, coral reefs and the coastal fisheries of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. And to the north, Louisiana's coastal marshes.

More than 125 miles of Louisiana coastline already have been hit with oil. "It's just killing us by degrees," said Tulane University ecologist Tom Sherry.

It's an area that historically has been something of a superhighway for hurricanes, too.

If a major storm rolls in, the relief well operations would have to be suspended and then re-started, adding more time to the process. Plugging the Ixtoc was also hampered by hurricane season, which begins Tuesday and is predicted to be very active.

Three of the worst storms ever to hit the Gulf coast — Betsy in 1965, Camille in 1969 and Katrina in 2005 — all passed over the leak site.

On the Gulf coast beaches, tropical weather was far from some tourists' minds.

On Biloxi beach, Paul Dawa and his friend Ezekial Momgeri sipped Coronas after a night gambling at the Hard Rock Casino. Both men, originally from Kenya, drove from Memphis, Tenn., and were chased off the beach by a storm, not oil.

"We talked about it and we decided to come down and see for ourselves" whether there was oil, Momgeri said. "There's no oil here."

Though some tar balls have been found on Mississippi and Alabama barrier islands, oil from the spill has not significantly fouled the shores.


Still, the perception that it has soiled white sands and fishing areas threatens to cripple the tourist economy, said Linda Hornsby, executive director of the Mississippi Hotel and Lodging Association


Video: Admiral: BP must fix its well

"It's not here. It may never be here. It's costing a lot of money to counter that perception," Hornsby said. "First it was cancellations, but that evolved to a decrease in calls and there's no way to measure that."

Yet there was fear the oil would eventually hit the other Gulf coast states. Hentzel Yucles, of Gulfport, Miss., hung out on the beach with his wife and sons.

"Katrina was bad. I know this is a different type of situation, but it's going to affect everybody," he said.

This country is just so doomed. If ever there was a bad omen it was Obama's Memorial Day speech yesterday.

Monsanto/Solutia to develop underwater plants yet?

+1

It might backfire in different, more porous geology, like salt formations.

Perhaps you've heard of the DEAD SPOTS in the Gulf that existed prior to the BP spill.

How do you think they got there?

Answer: Ixtoc Spill of 79

The entire humanity and their AUTOMOBILE and consumerism culture JUST ASKED FOR THIS!!!!!! I just feel sorry for the other living creatures that are going to suffer a horrible death and have nothing to do with this.

Conspiracy Thoughts on this Oil Disaster:

Thread: Oil Disaster in Gulf - Got Any Conspiracy Angles?

the best-case scenario of sealing the leak is two relief wells being drilled diagonally into the gushing well — tricky business that won't be ready until August.

"The probability of them hitting it on the very first shot is virtually nil," said David Rensink, incoming president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, who spent most of his 39 years in the oil industry in offshore exploration. "If they get it on the first three or four shots they'd be very lucky."

AN oil industry driller has already stated that drilling relief well is almost pointless and dangerous and could really blow up

Yes, I understand that however, the more research that is done we realize that oil has been spilling into the ocean's since the earth started. I'm sure there were many more "dead spots" after the 1979 spill but eventually, the Earth will heal itself...it just may not be in our lifetime. IMO.

BP Plc would need the equivalent of a lottery win to succeed with its first attempt to end the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in August using a so-called relief well, the president-elect of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists said.

[link to www.businessweek.com]

BP Plc would need the equivalent of a lottery win to succeed with its first attempt to end the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in August using a so-called relief well, the president-elect of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists said.

A relief well intercepts the damaged hole at an angle thousands of feet below the seabed and permanently closes it with heavy mud and cement. The method is the surest way for BP to end the largest oil spill in U.S. history, yet initial failure is “almost a certainty,” the association’s David Rensink said by telephone from Houston. “It would be like winning the lottery to get it on the first shot.”

BP faces some of the same challenges PTT Exploration & Production Pcl encountered last year in trying to stop a leak 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) below the seabed off northwest Australia.

The Thai oil and gas explorer finally plugged the Montara well in the Timor Sea after 10 weeks when a relief well enabled the company to pump 3,400 barrels of heavy mud to stanch the flow of oil. During one of the failed attempts to halt the leak on Nov. 1, a fire erupted while the Bangkok-based company was injecting the mud, engulfing and destroying the West Atlas drilling relief rig.

BP forecasts it will finish the first of two relief wells it has started drilling in early August, according to Doug Suttles, the executive in charge of the spill response. The first well has reached a depth of 12,090 feet, London-based BP said today in a statement, two-thirds of the way to completion. A second has reached 8,576 feet.

‘Hit-or-Miss’

The challenge is intersecting the damaged well, not the actual drilling, said Rensink, who becomes president of the association in July.

“What you’re doing is trying to intersect a well bore that is probably roughly a foot across with another well that is about a foot across,” he said. “It’s a hit-or-miss sort of thing. Ultimately the relief well will work. It’s just a matter of time, of continuing to poke at it until you intersect it.”

BP is drilling two wells because there is a risk it may not reach the target with just one, said Edson Nakagawa, head of the petroleum and geothermal division of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

“Drilling in this kind of environment is challenging with the deep water, deep wells, high pressure and high temperature,” Nakagawa said from Perth today.

Timor Sea

The cost of responding to the leak has risen to $990 million, BP said today. The well has spewed 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day, a U.S. government panel estimated May 27. The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon rig hired by BP exploded April 20, killing 11 crew members.

PTTEP estimated as much as 400 barrels of oil a day may have leaked into the Timor Sea between Aug. 21 and Nov. 3. That would make it the third-biggest spill in Australian history, based on figures from the Maritime Safety Authority.

“There are similarities between Montara and the Gulf” spills, said Brian Evans, head of Petroleum Engineering at Curtin University of Technology in Perth. “What really separates them is the deep water in Gulf of Mexico,” he said by telephone today. “They are dealing with much higher pressures than the Apollo missions had in space.”

A commission set up to investigate what happened at the Montara field, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) northwest of Australia’s Kimberley coast, is expected to issue a report and make safety recommendations in mid-June, Australia’s Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said last month.

if it's August 25th I will be freaked out

[link to www.businessweek.com]

BP faces some of the same challenges PTT Exploration & Production Pcl encountered last year in trying to stop a leak 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) below the seabed off northwest Australia.

The Thai oil and gas explorer finally plugged the Montara well in the Timor Sea after 10 weeks when a relief well enabled the company to pump 3,400 barrels of heavy mud to stanch the flow of oil. During one of the failed attempts to halt the leak on Nov. 1, a fire erupted while the Bangkok-based company was injecting the mud, engulfing and destroying the West Atlas drilling relief rig.

[link to polizeros.com]

Everyone says relief wells are the magic bullet

But can they stop the Gulf floor blowout? It’s not nearly as simple as it sounds. And when they did it with the massive underwater Ixtoc I blowout in 1979, it took months longer to complete than originally thought. Plus it was in shallower water.

But relief wells are something that, fortunately, engineers don’t have to do very often. Drilling the relief well also can be fraught with challenges — especially working in deep water on a well that has already had problems with gas bubbles.

“You have to hit something the size of a dinner plate miles into the earth, ” said Richard Charter, a senior policy adviser at the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife, who follows spills around the world. “Even in a shallow-water blowout, the drilling of a relief well can be complicated and problematic.”

So, where did the relief-well-will-stop-the-blowout meme start? I’m guessing BP. Who has been consistently wrong about most everything so far.

GOG: are you gay or what-? I would consider the source-a homo magazine promoting their lifestyle

.

Blame Obama -- he's been in charge since Day 1.

.

He stated that when BP was several hours into the top kill procedure and it looked promising in the beginning. He put in all his chips on this procedure and he lost. Now he is in charge of Epic Fail after Epic Fail. Even the relief well effort is no guarantee so if we get to Christmas and this is still ongoing he will be nothing more than a lame duck president whose approval ratings will exceed his predecessors lowest lows easily.