Tony Hayward, CEO of BP PLC (BP) said Sunday that about 10,000 barrels a day is being captured from the mile deep blown out well head on the Gulf of Mexico and is being processed at the surface, according to a report by MSNBC.com News Services. This is from the report:
Asked what proportion that represented of the total oil leaking, Hayward said: "At the moment it's difficult to say but we would expect it to be the majority, probably the vast majority of the oil."
Official estimates of the leak rate, recognized by both the government and BP, are between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels a day. Others have estimated higher amounts, some much higher. BP itself has estimated the well has the potential to produce as much as a maximum of 60,000 barrels a day.
According to Clifford Krauss in The New York Times, the head of the government response to the disaster, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, confirmed the 10,000 barrel a day recovery quantity Sunday. However, Krauss mentioned a logistical problem: the surface vessel receiving the oil has a 15,000 barrel capacity. Getting storage facilities to the site quickly may be a problem. Imagine the ridicule of planners who have not provided contingency for success and end up dumping recovered oil back onto the surface of the Gulf.
On Saturday, Holbrook Mohr and John Flesher, Associated Press writers, reported at TheStreet.com that approximately 6,000 barrels had been collected in the 24 hour period ended that afternoon. On Saturday, work was underway to close two of the four open vents in the capture device attached to the top of the cut off well head riser. Presumably it was the closing of vents that resulted in the increased oil capture rate reported Sunday. It is not clear from reports at this time if there are still open vents remaining to be closed. Possibly higher recovery rates will be obtained if there are still vents to be closed.
Also, the Krauss article mentions that additional capture capacity will be added to the current set-up within a week that could raise the volume of oil recovered.
The difficulty in reaching a stable operating configuration was highlighted by Clifford Krauss and Michael Cooper in The New York Times:
A technician working on the operation said the engineers were also working slowly and deliberately because of a concern that the volume and velocity of the escaping oil could create so much friction on the inside walls of the new 5,000-foot pipe that it could force it entirely off the cap.
“It’s a complicated deal,” said the technician, who spoke on the condition that he remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly. He said the engineers began working on closing the vents on Saturday morning. The speed at which they would close all four vents “depends on how everything reacts,” the technician said.
There are two pieces of good news in the latest results:
- If the configuration can be maintained, 10,000 barrels of oil a day will be captured and not escaping into the aquatic environment of the Gulf of Mexico, its shore lines and the surrounding ocean.
- Observation of the remaining escaping oil will provide a more certain estimate of the total effluent from the blown out well head. The official estimate should easily be substantiated if it is correct - a reduction of more than 50% to as much as 80% will be easily measured. If the higher unofficial estimates have any merit, that will be shown as well by a much smaller than 50% diminution of escaping oil.
Maybe relief will be coming for the rapid growth of volume of oil coming into the Gulf every day. The problem of cleaning up the tens of millions of gallons of oil already released remains. As discussed last week, remediation and liability costs for this event will be at least nine billion dollars and could well be tens of billions of dollars. The higher amounts become more likely if any criminal convictions result from the operations leading up to the disaster.
Disclosure: No positions.
