BP Begins Cementing Well in Final ‘Static Kill’ Step

Updated 5:07 p.m. ET
BP says it has finished pouring cement into the well. “Monitoring of the well is under way in order to confirm the effectiveness of the procedure,” the company said in a statement.

Updated 1:57 p.m. ET
BP began pumping cement into its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico Thursday morning, the final step in the “static kill” maneuver that began Tuesday afternoon. The cement follows thousands of barrels of heavy drilling mud that the company slowly poured in through the top of the well over the course of about 10 hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, gradually pushing the oil in the well back into the reservoir 2 1/2 miles underground.

Officials had been waiting to see how well the drilling mud worked before deciding whether or not to follow it with cement, but they gave BP the go-ahead Wednesday night.

At a news conference Thursday, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander, mixed a note of triumph with caution. He said that the successful static kill “will virtually assure us that there will be no more oil leaking into the Gulf.” But he also emphasized that he would not consider the well completely dead until a relief well was completed that would allow engineers to pump in mud and seal the well from the bottom as well as the top.

“You want to make sure it’s really dead, dead, dead. Don’t want anything to rise out of the grave,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu told The Washington Post.

The well had been capped since July 15, keeping new oil out of the Gulf. But that cap was a temporary measure. With thousands of pounds of oil pushing up against it, it could not hold forever. Now, oil has been pushed back into the reservoir, relieving the pressure at the top of the well.

The “bottom kill” using the relief well will add another layer of certainty. Right now, engineers are still not certain whether the mud that they pumped in has filled only the drill pipe, or also the area between the drill pipe casing and the outside of the well, called the annulus. Using the relief well, they will be able to intercept the annulus at the bottom of the well and fill that with mud and cement as well, if necessary.

The relief well is now within four feet of the annulus horizontally, and about 150 feet above the interception point. However, work was stopped on that well when the static kill began, because the two are so close together.

Allen said Thursday that work on the relief well will begin again when the static kill cementing is finished and has had time to set. It will then take about five to seven days to do the precise drilling necessary to intercept the well from the bottom — and finally kill it for good.