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From Kent Well's tech briefing today: http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/in...
So we did pump the static kill yesterday at five barrels per minute. We were able to watch as we pumped the mud in. We were able to watch the pressure continuously and gradually decline.
And these were all very encouraging signs. And then what we kept doing is we kept injecting it as five barrels a minute, injecting more of the oil that was in the casing and actually mud, and continued to inject it into the reservoir for a period of time to try to get – make sure we'd cleaned out all of the oil that we could out of the casing.
And so we pumped for a number of hours. And then as we got confident that we'd actually got the well into a static condition, we actually increased the rate up to 10 barrels a minute, and then ultimately 15 barrels a minute, and we did that to give ourselves confidence that, if we chose to go ahead with the cementing procedure, that we could actually pump at higher rates, because that will give us a more effective cement job.
So by the end of the whole process, we had injected about 2,300 barrels of mud, and a lot of that was actually designed at just cleaning out the casing and making sure that we could move forward with the cement job with confidence, if we choose to do so.
And what we – what we're doing now is, every six hours, we just inject a little more mud into the well, just to continue to give ourselves confidence that we can do that, keep our equipment live, and we're seeing a very, very static set of conditions as we continue to monitor the pressure, which is all very encouraging.
I’m encouraged that his description is exactly what I thought should happen — as they pumped mud in, the pressure dropped because the mud relieved the oil pressure.
Too bad they couldn’t do this 3 months ago — I mean, they obviously could have done this 3 months ago, except they didn’t have the special cap built at the time, and they had to try less risky things first. Hindsight and all.
But it was funny that as they came to actually being able to stop the oil and kill the well, the government mostly stuck it’s nose in and tried to gum up the works.