4th UPDATE: Gulf Oil Spill Recovery Vessels Returning To Scene

24th Jul 2010 21:55

(Updates with information on the return of Transocean drilling rig to Deepwater Horizon location.) By Mark Long and Angel Gonzalez Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES A drilling rig working on a relief well is back at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as a tropical storm that prompted evacuation petered out over the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. The Development Driller 3, which is drilling the first of two relief wells designed to kill the leak, is back on location, a spokesman for Transocean Ltd. (RIG), the company that owns the rig, said Saturday afternoon. Two other Transocean vessels--one of which is tasked with drilling a back-up relief well--are also on their way back and scheduled to arrive late Saturday or early Sunday, the spokesman said. Ret. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who heads the federal oil spill response effort, said in a teleconference Saturday that the Development Driller 3 could be hooked back up to its subsea equipment eight to 12 hours its return. Once everything is back in place, work will resume on the laying of casing in the well bore, which will be cemented. "Once the casing is in place and the cement is drying, we intend to move ahead with the static kill," Mr. Allen said, referring to a separate operation to plug up the broken well with drilling mud pumped down from another vessel. "The static kill could go very quickly," he said, roughly estimating that engineers might be ready to start that operation three to five days from now. Before the evacuation was decreed late Thursday, the rig was completing the casing of the relief well, in preparation for it to intersect with the well that has spewed millions of barrels of crude in the Gulf. The intersection was scheduled for the end of July before the evacuation happened. Allen said it would take seven to 10 days after the Development Driller 3 is hooked back up for the broken well to be intercepted. He said two vessels were able to remain at the scene of the spill to monitor the cap that was left in place that's kept oil from gushing into the Gulf for more than a week "We continue to have integrity at the wellhead; pressure continues to slowly rise," he said. "Our confidence is increasing that we may have greater integrity in the well than we guessed." The National Hurricane Center discontinued tropical storm warnings on Saturday morning, as Tropical Depression Bonnie weakened as it moved across the Gulf. Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said no increase in strength was expected as it reaches the coast Saturday evening. "We do not expect any significant storm surge along the coast," Lubchenco said, adding the storm, which will pass right over the spill site, will help dissipate and break up the oil on the surface. While waves from the storm could push oil deeper into marshes, they may also flush tarballs off some fouled beaches. The storm prompted oil companies across the Gulf to evacuate personnel and shut in more than half of the area's oil production, although several companies said Saturday they were planning to restart manning their facilities. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which regulates offshore energy production, said that 51.65% of the oil produced in the Gulf (826,365 barrels a day) was shut in. Some 23.53% of the natural gas produced in the region (1.5 billion cubic feet a day) was shut in. Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA,RDSB) said in a statement on its website early Saturday that it's begun planning the redeployment of personnel and the ramp-up of production in its Gulf operations. -By Mark Long and Angel Gonzalez, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2145; [email protected] (END) Dow Jones Newswires July 24, 2010 16:55 ET (20:55 GMT)