DEEPWATER HORIZON NEWS

From NOLA:

BP will begin replacing the cap on its leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico today with a tighter-fitting model that could prevent oil from gushing into the sea entirely, the federal government's point man for spill response said Friday morning.

The multistep process could be complete as soon as late Monday and, if successful, could bring to an end a more than 80 days of oil gushing continuously into the Gulf, said Thad Allen, a retired Coast Guard Admiral who as National Incident Commander is overseeing BP's efforts to rein in the oil gusher.

We shall see. I hope the new cap fits better than the old cap. That the cap will entirely stop the flow, I find hard to believe, but I pray I'm wrong.













Also from NOLA:

For the first time Friday, the Coast Guard and BP acknowledged that a mysterious second pipe, wedged next to the drill pipe in what remains of the Deepwater Horizon's riser, is fouling up the works where the Gulf of Mexico well is spewing hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil into the sea.

"We used a diamond saw and we got inside. We found there was actually two sets of drill pipe there," said retired Adm. Thad Allen, the top U.S. Coast Guard official overseeing the response to the nation's worst-ever oil spill.

Some experts say a second piece of drill pipe in the riser could have prevented shear rams on the rig's blowout preventer from sealing the well and permanently cutting off the flow of oil after the April 20 explosion. The presence of two pipes could have also contributed to BP's failure to make a clean cut on the riser when securing the existing containment dome, inhibiting its ability to collect the maximum amount of oil.

Whoops! Another pipe! Who knew? Not BP or the US Coast Guard, or did they?

The Coast Guard's acknowledgement of the two metal tubes Friday -- and a subsequent reference by BP to its plans to tie the two pipes together as the company installs a new oil-collection system over the shaved-off riser -- actually comes more than a month after the Department of Energy noted the second pipes using special imaging technology. At the time, BP dismissed the Energy findings as "impossible" because only one pipe in sections was used for drilling, a Tribune News Service story reported last month.

I've lost count of the number of BP's "impossibles" which have proved themselves to be entirely possible, including the original explosion.

And remind me again who the Coast Guard works for.