BP says it still might drill in spill reservoir

By GREG BLUESTEIN and JASON DEAREN, Associated Press Writers

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - BP PLC might someday drill again in the same undersea oil reservoir that gushed millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico in one of the world's worst oil spills, a company official said Friday.

"There's lots of oil and gas here," Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said at a news briefing. "We're going to have to think about what to do with that at some point."

Suttles has spent more than three months managing BP's response efforts on the Gulf but is now returning to his day job in Houston, the company said. Mike Utsler, a vice president who has been running BP's command post in Houma, La., since April, will replace him.

The personnel shift comes as BP appears to be gaining the upper hand on plugging the leak.

Engineers this week poured in cement to complete a plug at the top of the wellbore as part of a process dubbed a "static kill," but they needed to wait at least a day for it to harden. Once it does, crews can finish the last stretch of a relief well and inject more mud and cement into the bottom of well from deep underground to form a final plug.

Suttles said engineers plan to monitor the cement and hope to test the plug with a burst of pressure Friday afternoon to make sure it's sealed.

"All the indications so far look very encouraging," he said.

The static kill started Tuesday with engineers pumping enough mud down the top of the well to push the crude back to its underground source for the first time since an oil rig exploded off Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the massive spill.

A federal report this week indicated that only about a quarter of the spilled crude remains in the Gulf and is degrading quickly, but some scientists disputed its veracity, and much of the remaining crude has permeated deep into marshes and wetlands, complicating cleanup.

"There's essentially no skimmable oil left on the surface, no recoverable oil left on the surface," Suttles said.

As BP pulled brought in 33-year employee Utsler to take over the response and the blown well appeared to have flatlined, some Gulf residents who still see the oil wreaking havoc worry the nation's attention is shifting.

"I'm losing trust in the whole system," said Willie Davis, a 41-year-old harbormaster in Pass Christian, Miss. "If they don't get up off their behinds and do something now, it's gonna be years before we're back whole again."

After the cement in the oil well hardens, the last step in the plugging effort begins: Finishing the drilling of the last 100 feet of the relief well, which government officials said will be used to seal the underground reservoir from the bottom with mud and cement.

"This is not the end, but it will virtually assure us that there will be no chance of oil leaking into the environment," retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who oversees the spill response for the government, said Thursday in Washington.

Suttles confirmed Friday that crews plan to use the 18,000-foot relief well to fill the underground reservoir feeding the well with mud and cement. The company had been hedging on how exactly it would use the relief well, which it has been digging for three months, but federal officials insisted it should be used to perform the so-called "bottom kill."

The vast oil reservoir beneath the well could still be worth billions of dollars, and until Friday BP had not indicated any plans to cash in on that potential windfall.

In Pass-A-Loutre, La., where oil still clings stubbornly to marsh cane, each day's high tide picks up the goo and leaks it back into the ocean. But Jeremy Ingram, the Coast Guard official who oversees cleanup crews here, said it's cleaner than it was when he arrived 60 days ago. Back then, he said, he couldn't even see water through the thick ooze.

"I'd say it's a lot less than what was here, but if you see on the canes it's still heavily saturated with oil. So the job's not done yet, there's still a lot more work to get done," he said. "As the tide comes up and washes oil off that cane, somebody and some thing has to be here to catch it."

The sometimes frustrating search for oil underscores the difficulties facing the small army of federal officials and cleanup crews tasked with purging what remains. Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft, the government's on-scene coordinator, said he's had to spend a growing amount of his time taking flights over the Gulf to search for the remaining crude.

"There is very little observable oil out there," he said, saying that Coast Guard responders are not seeing much on the surface. But he added: "We can't turn a blind eye ... If we don't see oil, I'm not assuming it doesn't exist."

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Dearen reported from Pass-A-Loutre. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jennifer Kay in Pensacola Beach, Fla., Brian Skoloff in Pass Christian, Miss., Harry R. Weber, Jeffrey Collins and Jeff McMillan in New Orleans, and Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala.

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)