US Government: Preparations To Kill Gulf Oil Leak Resume As Vessels Return

Preparations to finally kill the Deepwater Horizon oil leak are resuming as rigs and other vessels return to the scene after fleeing ahead a tropical storm, the top U.S. official overseeing recovery efforts said Sunday.

Work on a relief well and a separate operation to plug BP PLC's (BP) broken Macondo well was set back by at least a week by the evacuation ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie, which disintegrated as it passed over the Gulf and approached shore, Ret. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said during a teleconference.

Allen said Transocean Ltd.'s (RIG) Development Driller III rig, which arrived back at the site on Saturday, is expected to be relatched onto the relief well a mile below the sea's surface by midnight. In coming days, crews will resume running liner into the well bore, which will then be cemented in place. At the same time, preparations will be completed to allow another vessel, the Q4000, to begin pumping heavy drilling mud down to plug the broken well, an operation called a "static kill."

"Generally the next week will be preps, making sure everything's ready to go and getting the liner run, and then the week of the first of August is when we'll attempt to do the static kill...," Allen said, adding the "bottom kill," whereby the breached well will be permanently plugged via the relief well, will be finished after that.

While the relief well and the static-kill operation are the top priorities, Allen said crews on other vessels will resume work on a second, back-up relief well, and on completing a containment system that could bring up to 80,000 barrels of oil a day to ships on the surface. "We need to have backups for all these systems."

Allen spoke amid a flurry of media reports saying BP's board could approve the departure of the British oil giant's embattled chief executive, Tony Hayward, on Monday. People familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal that managing director Bob Dudley, an American who's overseeing the company's spill-recovery effort, is set to be named as Hayward's successor.

"I've got no knowledge of the inner workings of BP," Allen said. "I have no knowledge of any personnel changes that are going on," he said, adding he was concentrating on his role coordinating the response to the spill.

Although Tropical Storm Bonnie petered out into a minor tropical depression as it approached shore, it did move oil on the sea's surface further to the North and Northwest, closer to Louisiana's southeastern shore, Allen said.

"We are doing very, very intensive surveys today to find out where the oil is at," he said, adding there were concerns some of the containment boom used to fend off oil from shore was forced into and dragged through some ecologically sensitive areas.

-By Mark Long, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2145; mark.long@dowjones.com

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