Louisiana, July 14: BP was poised to carry out a make-or-break test on Wednesday on the integrity of the leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well, following a delay imposed by US authorities.
The former Coast Guard chief leading the US response to the disaster took the decision to put the test off until Wednesday at the earliest after meeting the energy secretary, Mr Steven Chu, a Nobel-winning physicist, and other experts.
BP is poised to test whether a 75-tonne cap can seal the devastating leak without threatening the structural integrity of the well.
But US officials fear that if the pressure caused by shutting off the flow of oil increases too quickly, it could send oil shooting up from a new leak on the sea floor — further aggravating the worst oil spill in US history.
“We continue to prepare and review protocols for the well integrity test — including the seismic mapping run that was made around the well site,” Admiral Thad Allen said in a statement.
“As a result of these discussions, we decided that the process may benefit from additional analysis that will be performed on Wednesday night and on Thursday.”
BP’s capping device, which contains three giant valves, was lowered on Monday and latched onto the ruptured pipe almost a mile (1.6 kilometres) down on the sea floor where only underwater robots can operate. Once given the go-ahead, BP engineers will gradually close the valves to lock in the oil, in a process expected to last between six and 48 hours.