US lawmaker says BP could 'evade' fines by shutting in Gulf well

[mhatrw]

Source: platts.com

A key US lawmaker blasted BP Sunday for announcing that it looked to
keep the recently fitted cap closed on its blown-out Macondo well, saying the
strategy would prevent the US government from accurately measuring how much
oil and natural gas spewed into the Gulf of Mexico over the course of the last
three months.

Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, expressed his
concerns just hours after Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for
exploration and production, told reporters that BP hoped to keep the damaged
well "shut in" with a special sealing cap until it can be killed with an
emergency relief well in the coming weeks. Any resumption in ad hoc production
at the site could provide data for determining how much oil had been flowing
into the Gulf during the disaster.

"If the well remains fully shut in until the relief well is completed, we
may never have a fully accurate determination of the flow rate from this
well," Markey said in a letter to retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the
national incident commander for the Macondo operation.

Markey said BP has "consistently underestimated the flow rate" from the
damaged well, and suggested that the company's idea of keeping the well shut
in -- as opposed to hooking up riser lines to collect oil in surface vessels
-- is a way to "evade billions of dollars in fines." Under the US Clean Water
Act, companies are fined for oil spills on a per-barrel basis, with the
penalty reaching $4,300 per barrel, per day, in cases involving "gross
negligence."


Read more: http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews.aspx?xmlpath=RSSFeed/HeadlineNews/Oil/8917806.xml

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This explains why BP wants to keep the well capped off although this strategy is obviously far riskier than relieving the pressure by containing the oil and collecting it at the surface.

[Angry Dragon]

1. I am so surprized that bp is trying to hide something

[mhatrw]

2. Who is in charge here?

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/07/18/oil-spill-is-the-well-leaking/

It only became clear late on Sunday why government scientists were worried. In an official letter to BP's Dudley that was released a little before 9 PM, Allen said that seafloor monitoring had detected some kind of seepage a distance from the well and found "undetermined anomalies at the wellhead." Allen told Dudley that the company was required to investigate and report to the government within four hours of the detection of any gas leak, and—this may be key—Allen directed BP to provide him a written procedure for opening the choke valve on the containment cap "as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the wellhead be confirmed." In other words, BP had to be ready to stop the pressure test and let oil flow into the Gulf once more. ...

Beyond the condition of the wellbore, however, Sunday's odd chain of events once again raises the question of who exactly is in charge of this procedure. It's not the first time there's seemingly been a split between BP and the government—the same thing happened during the top kill attempt in late May, when BP repeatedly expressed optimism that the plan would work only to see Washington, on the advice of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, shut it down over fears that the procedure might damage the wellbore. While Allen does have the final say what's being done to the well, it's still BP engineers who are running the show minute by minute, and the admiral is dependent on BP for the immediate information he needs to make those decisions. According to a federal official who spoke to the AP for their story Sunday night, BP was not complying with Washington's demand for more monitoring near the wellhead—and Allen himself had to send a letter to BP's Dudley to demand more information, including additional seismic testing of the seafloor. ...

So that's where we stand—and another trip to the spillcam shows no oil leaking from the containment cap, the entire underwater scene as silent and eerie as the first frames of a Jaws film. It's still not clear what the "answers" are that federal scientists were seeking, but I suppose it's a relief that they apparently got them. Still this entire awkward series of command via letters and releases underscores how dysfunctional this response has been. Allen may be in charge, but he's relying on BP to give him information and carry out his orders—Washington seems to have no independent eyes on the scene, as Andrew Revkin points out at Dot Earth. Just for comparison's sake, imagine NASA carrying out a mission the way BP and the government have with the well—a private company carrying out the orders and relaying information from Houston, and NASA rocketman giving orders from Washington. Not exactly Apollo 13—and not exactly comforting.

[mhatrw]

3. BP has good (financial) reasons to risk well breach.

http://trueslant.com/oshagraydavidson/2010/07/19/new-evidence-of-well-failure-splits-bp-feds/

That was never the plan Allen had approved. He had been clear all along that following the tests, the well would be hooked up to a riser pipe feeding oil to vessels on the surface with the capacity to capture all the oil from the well. The purpose of the test was to ensure that the well bore and casing were sufficiently strong to allow the well to be closed for brief periods if a hurricane forced the oil-collecting ships into port.

BP has good reason to change that plan and leave the well capped, however, even with test results inconclusive and other evidence now indicating that the well is failing.

If the well is opened according to plan, the government will, for the first time, be able to accurately measure the rate at which oil has been flowing into the Gulf. That number will determine how much BP will have to pay in fines – at $4,300 per barrel. As things stand now, BP’s lawyers can be expected to argue that any estimate made by the government is arbitrary and probably too high. A scientific measurement of the flow could force BP to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines that they might otherwise be able to argue down in court.

Suttles stated repeatedly that “no one wants to see oil flowing back into the sea,” and warned that opening the well again could unleash the torrent of oil for “potentially up to three day.”

[mhatrw]

4. CNN's version

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/19/gulf.oil.disaster/?hpt=T2

Rep. Ed Markey, who has been a vocal critic of BP's response to the gusher, said Sunday that the company could have another motivation for wanting to keep the well capped.

"If the well remains fully shut in until the relief well is completed, we may never have a fully accurate determination of the flow rate from this well. If so, BP -- which has consistently underestimated the flow rate -- might evade billions of dollars of fines," Markey, D-Massachusetts, said in a letter to Allen released Sunday.

Using ships on the surface to collect 100 percent of the gushing oil would allow scientists to calculate the flow rate -- a figure that the government would use to determine how much to fine BP, Markey said.

[mhatrw]

5. Mother Jones' Take

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/07/actual-size-gulf-disaster-still-unknown

There may be concerns about whether the well is safe, but for now, BP has closed in the Gulf gusher after nearly three months. Yet even after three months, we still don't have a solid estimate of how much oil was escaping the well for all that time. The official government flow rate team last released an estimate on June 15, leaving the range of possible estimates quite large: 35,000 barrels per day up to 60,000. But with the well now closed in, might we never get an accurate idea of how much oil has been dumped in the Gulf?

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who has been going gangbusters on making BP and the federal government own up to the reality of this disaster, sent a letter on Monday to Thad Allen, the federal incident commander, asking whether closing in the well will make it impossible to know how much oil is leaking. It had previously been indicated that the new cap would allow them to pump all of the oil to the surface for collection, which would have offered indisputable figures. Now that BP plans to contain it, Markey worries, we will never know the real figure. "By shutting in this well, we could be shutting off our last best chance to determine what BP could pay in government fines," said Markey.

In his letter to Allen, Markey suggests that, should the reported problems with the well continue, they should instead try the collection option: "If it is necessary to again allow the well to flow, either because a decision to keep it shut in indefinitely is unsound, or in order to conduct the relief well bottom kill‚ then there would be no reason at that point for not taking the opportunity to conduct a 100 percent hydrocarbon collection test."

"It is imperative that we understand your current plans and be able to assess the ramifications of different options at this point," Markey continues. "I am also concerned, as I know you are, that continuing to keep the well fully shut in, could pose risks of additional problems with well integrity, an issue that I have raised with both you and BP in separate letters over the past few weeks."

[Ticonderoga]

6. The US Govt. had three months to measure the flow.

More smoke and mirrors.

[LisaL]

7. Hah?

[mhatrw]

8. What? You don't think that collecting all the oil with a tight cap would

result in a far more accurate measurement of the minimum flow rate?

In addition, BP has been running this show since the beginning and the govt, with few exceptions, has been in cahoots. One of the very few consistent exceptions to this rule has been Rep. Markey. What makes you question him?