A Window on the Deep

By 2 a.m. on Wednesday morning, most observers agreed that the wire saw was stuck halfway through cutting the pipe; this was later confirmed by the Coast Guard. By dawn, the big shears came back from the surface and by noon had clamped onto the piece of the fallen riser still spewing oil, in what looked like an effort to relieve the pressure on the stuck sawing wire. By noon the wire saw was humming away again. The real test comes when they try to install the cap.

The major lesson one can draw from days of on and off watching is that the process of controlling the runaway well is going to take longer than initial claims. Some are now talking about some sort of leak continuing until Christmas. When this is all over oil well MC252 will probably have cost some $10s of billions and never produced a useful drop. BP may or may not still be in existence.

Naturally there will be a little something extra in your gasoline bill to pay for all this.

FCNP.com