McClatchy Newspapers
MIAMI – After a day of delay over concerns of potentially triggering a new and uncontrollable blowout deep beneath the sea floor, the federal government gave the yellow light to BP’s latest scheme to stem the geyser of crude poisoning the Gulf of Mexico.
BP began 48 hours of critical pressure tests late Wednesday on a massive 75-ton fitting placed on the broken well over the weekend, a tighter coupling the company believes could finally do what a frustrated American public and president have been pleading for nearly three months: Plug the hole.
The oil giant was operating under orders from the Obama administration to proceed with caution, slowly shutting down valves while watching that the proposed fix doesn’t make things worse by – in the worst-case scenario – rupturing a well of still-uncertain condition.
Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, commander of the federal cleanup task force, said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and a team of federal and industry scientists and geologists had raised questions about BP’s planned “well integrity test” that in an “overabundance of caution” needed to be addressed.