And the 6000 figure is not the rate, because they started much lower. I think they are claiming a capture rate now of 8000BPD. So yes, now we get to see what a better estimate on the actual leak rate is.
They said cutting the riser might bump it 20%, and I think lots of people suspect that delta was low, given what the respective plumes looked like. The ship at the top is limited to processing 15KBPD (there are conflicting claims on this, earlier some said the limit was storage which could be handled by offloading more often, but others say processing rate limit). If the 19KBPD was low, and the 20% delta was low, 15KBPD might pretty quickly be only 50% of the flow. That will be an ouch.
I played with BP calls on Thursday, and unfortunately held to Friday morning rather than dumping at the close Thursday, but it was still a very sweet deal. Tried to lowball back in near the close Friday, but was not hit. I didn't mind, as the ramp on the recovery rate seemed slow. Now I'm kind of wishing I'd bumped the bid a bit higher.
They'll keep ramping today & tomorrow, but it will be interesting if by the open monday they are near capacity at 15KBPD, but the leak still looks alarming. Which way will the stock head then?
A related item to keep watching is that I think they will pull the relief well in early. The first one has been drilled over 7000ft out of about 15000 linear feet total in about 29 days to the end of May. The diameter steps down, but the depth is now greater, so I don't know what that does to feet/day, but I'd guess they finish near the end of June. There remains the question of hitting the intersection which could add significantly with retries.
But there might be some good gambling in BP calls for July, and the stock might well be quite a bit lower by then. |
