This doesn’t look good to me. You pump a liquid into a moving liquid it wants to get carried along with it and out the leak. It would take a massive pumping operation to overcome the natural flow of the leak with a heavier fluid.
They have eight 30,000 HP pumps and that's just on one rig.
The entire key to this current process is to be able to pump mud into the well faster than it can be carried out by the fluids flowing out of the well. If they can’t do that they are wasting their time but I believe they CAN do this.
The well is flowing at something like 3 barrels per minute. if you can pump in 4 barrels per minute you will eventually kill the well assuming that the well is structurally intact downhole and doesn’t allow the mud being pumped in to flow out into the formation.
Agreed. I've been wondering myself how they can get the heavy mud to overcome the massive force and pressure of the oil gushing out of the pipeline. I can't visualize how that will work.