"Is it wise for them to work on the failed BOP now that the "top kill" is a success"
Absolutely. One of the biggest alarmist nutballs (financial advisor short BP) who showed up on the Drum has stated several times that he will publicly apologize to BP and seek a new career if the BOP gets recovered.
I think the plan is to still do the bottom kill with the relief well. I'm sort of not paying an awful lot of attention, but I think the plan is to try to recover the drill pipe that is still inside the casing, then remove the old BOP, and bring it to the surface where the FBI will grab it immediately as evidence that Obama is a Muslim. Then they will install a new BOP B4 doing any more on the final bottom kill. The relief wells has their own BOPs, but it sez here RW2 will give it up for the cause.
The old well has been plugged with cement. They have established thru a number of pressure tests that it has been done successfully, and that there will be no flow during the time the BOP is being changed out.
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BP's Deepwater Horizon - BP Begins "Fishing Operation" - and Open Thread
Posted by Gail the Actuary on August 22, 2010 - 9:40am
Based on a press release by BP Saturday evening, BP started the "fishing" operation aimed at removing the drill pipe that is within the BOP Saturday morning.
One reason for removing the drill pipe is a practical one, according to a technical talk by BP's Kent Wells on August 19:
Reporter: I was hoping you could explain a little bit more why you need to remove the drill pipe; how it would impede the progress in moving the capping stack and the legacy BOP and putting the new one on.
Kent Wells: Yes. Another good question. So, we could have up to, I think it’s around 3,500 feet of drill pipe hanging below the BOP. And, if we were to – and we believe that the drill pipe’s being held by the BOP. So, if we were to try to pick up the BOP right now, we’d have to lift it 3,500 feet straight up to pull all of the drill pipe out, and then we’d have difficulty handling that, et cetera.
So, we think it’s more prudent for us to go in and try to what we call fish it, actually pull the drill pipe out first and recover all of it, and then go and then take off the capping stack and then recover the BOP. So, I think that’s the procedure that we believe is the most prudent way to go about it, at this point in time.
In the same technical talk, Kent Wells indicated that the fishing operation wouldn't be very easy to watch through the ROV cameras:
We’ll actually be fishing inside the capping stack down into the BOP, so there wouldn’t be any good ROV feed that would indicate that. But, what we will do is we’ll make sure that we keep you informed through briefings or releases, et cetera, about how that process is going, so that you understand it.
Once the drill pipe is removed, the next step will be to remove the blowout preventer (BOP) in an undamaged way, so that it can be used as evidence in determining why it did not function properly at the time of the original blowout. Admiral Allen sent Bob Dudley a letter, giving him until Sunday evening to put together a plan for safely removing the BOP, and ensuring that the BOP salvage operation does not compromise the investigation. According to the letter:
According to BP's recent press release, once BP gets approval, it will proceed with an operation in which it replaces the original BOP with the BOP from the second relief well. In anticipation of a successful operation, BP has unlatched its BOP from the second relief well site.
BP's press release also indicates that BP and the federal science team are also making contingency plans, in case something goes wrong with the fishing operations.
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