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The good news is that, in this case, the relief well does not, apparently, need to intersect the well exactly--it just needs to be close. Once the relief well penetrates the reservoir, enough mud can be pumped to hopefully overcome flowing pressure and kill the well.

My understanding is that the relief well intersects and cuts into the pipe, it doesn't go into the reservoir.

Today's open thread had a decent discussion of the techniques that might be used in killing the well...it is scattered though....full thread:

BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Windows Can be Short, a Delay, and a Digression - and Open Thread

Might start with this subthread where Rockman addresses Allen's misstatement :

FOR ALL

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At the end of the previous thread: Relief well collapses. The well bore did not collapse. Even in the captioned video they don’t say that. There was “debris” in the bottom 40’ of the hole. Debris is a very loaded word. It was sand and mud. When you POOH there is always a certain amount of “sloughing“ or as we call it “fill up“. It’s often caused by pulling the drill pipe out of the hole: it scrapes the sides and knocks some of the rock loose. The standard procedure when going back to bottom is to “ream” the last 100’ or so to clean out the fill. It wouldn't take the estimated 24 hours to just clean out the fill either. It’s also standard procedure to circulate the mud around a number of times to make sure it’s uniform and all the fill has been removed. The round trip time for mud at this depth would be around 6-8 hours.

A side educational note since we talking mud cleaning: As the mud gets back to the surface it passes thru the “shakers”: large vibrating horizontal screen panels that separate the cuttings from the mud. Typically one of the loudest spots on a rig. I’ve spent thousands of hours at the shaker watching returns. Double ear protection is highly recommended.