"BP Plc and the Obama Administration may decide today whether to complete a relief well to intercept and permanently seal 'its' damaged Gulf of Mexico well." was reported August 13, 2010 by Bloomberg Businessweek. With the Macondo well blow-out presently sealed and the well cemented shut there is a risk that completing the relief well could actually cause another blow-out by exposing the high pressure reservoir to another pathway of release. It was risky to apply the high pressure sealing cap on the Macondo well leak, that successfully stopped the well fluids from gushing into the ocean, as it was feared there was damage in the wellbore that would rupture under the extreme pressure needed to cap the well. That occurrence could have caused a larger blow-out harder to stop.
Common sense dictates that until there is, in place, in proximity to the drilling operation, equipment that can be quickly deployed to capture petroleum fluids gushing from a blow-out, there should be no further drilling.
From the time the US Minerals Management Department first permitted deepwater drilling the requirement to have subsea spill containment equipment that could collect 100,000 bbl/day of oil and prevent ocean pollution was ignored. The Macondo well blow-out disaster has exposed this fact and yet there has been very little attention paid to how and why the oil companies were able to perpetrate the deception and will there be consequences imposed on all of the oil companies drilling the GOM deepwater wells for having lied on the permit applications.
There is a non profit organization formed by four major oil companies to, now, finally develop the equipment that was supposed to already be in place. Is this the fox guarding the hen house?
There is already an equipment design available as depicted on the website www.dwoc.info that can collect all of the petroleum fluids and prevent blow-out fluids from polluting the deepwater environment.
In my opinion the relief well entry into the high pressure producing formation should be postponed until there is "spill" containment equipment in place.