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only thing that kind of bothers me here is that plugging up the hole by pumping a bunch of mud and cr@p into it is not exactly a high-tech solution. Shouldn’t this have been the thing they tried FIRST? You know, before the multi-million dollar Thunderdome that could not handle the freezing temperatures a mile down?

They had to devise a way to stab into the failed BOP at a mile below the surface. The way that they have killed the well is how it has been done since the beginning of the oil business. Pump high rates of a heavy fluid into the well to overcome the pressure of the flow and kill it.

The whole process was a logistical and engineering nightmare. Don't forget that the rig exploded and fell on top of the blowout well and all of that had to be moved before anything could happen.
Frankly the fact they were able to try this procedure and have any success is amazing. Next thing is to go on and drill a relief well to take the pressure off.
The arrogant Obama and U.S. Government were bluffing when they threatened to take over since they have no expertise and no equipment to do the job, they would have to rely on the same private sector experts, etc. as BP and the result of the Government oversight would have been a unmitigated disaster!!!!!!!!!!!!

See my post #155 immediately above this. I’ll be a bit nicer to you though - BP was working on topkill right away. It takes much more time to get things together for topkill than it took for the other attempts first. They have been working on topkill efforts almost from the first day. The ROVs have been preparing the environment and making the connections for at least two weeks now, cutting, tearing, polishing, welding, etc. BP had to get many other pieces of equipment on site - like vessels with nearly 100,000 barrels of specifically designed “mud” to feed to the 16,000 psi, 5000 gallon per minute pumps (One heck of a power sprayer)... not to mention at all the hoses, connectors, powerlines, hydralics, etc needed to accomplish this Herculean feat.

Shouldn’t this have been the thing they tried FIRST?

They worked on several fixes simultaneously. For the TopKill alone they had to run fluid analysis, design the manifolds and hardware, build it, move it into place, test it and then get permission to attempt it. If Topkill fails, they would try the Junk Shot, if that fails they will attempt to cut and cap the riser.....all while drilling two relief wells. All in all, absolutely stunning engineering in record breaking time.

Shoot - by the way,

BP was very upfront in their warnings that the tophats, etc, did not have a great chance of working. It isn’t that they couldn’t stand the temperatures, either - but the fact that oil and gas behaves very differently this far under the ocean. They made the attempts anyway though they realized they were likely to fail - in effect doing something that they thought was a waste of money - while they continued working on other avenues more likely to be effective. Note I said WHILE they were working.

As we speak now, in fact, they are also drilling “relief wells” ... not able to be completed for months yet - because that is widely recognized as the most likely procedure to be effective. They are doing that even though it is by far and away the most costly thing to do.

BP was not putting all their eggs in this topkill effort, only giving it a 2/3 chance of working (I thought that optimistic).

I suspect that they have at least a dozen other projects and avenues of attack underway right now. Hopefully a week or so from now all of those can be shut down and phased out and the resource being put into those can be re-allocated.