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Feds OK Attempt to Plug Oil Leak; Debt & Recovery; 'Top Kill' Operation Begins
Aired May 26, 2010 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: OK, new hour, new "Rundown." Let me tell you what's going on right now.
It's all about the oil spill, day 37 of the oil spill. We don't actually know how much oil is gushing into the Gulf every day. On the low end, it's 5,000 barrels a day. On the high end, 70,000 barrels a day.
Let me explain to you what BP is doing now.
They have just been given the green light from the Coast Guard to go ahead with their top kill. This is the effort to plug that well again. Let me explain to you what's going on.
First of all, we've got this, this picture. This is the bottom of the ocean. This is the ocean floor. This is something called the blowout preventer.
It is very, very large. It's five stories high. Basically, what's going to be happen is BP's going to be shooting a lot of mud into that pipe.
The mud is going to force the remaining oil up. OK? Then they're going to follow that with cement. You're going to see the cement now filling that pipe.
That's cement. It's going to close that hole. They're going to go right into the ground with that.
The idea is that they get the oil out, they create some force to actually get that cement in. Obviously, with oil gushing out of the bottom of the ocean, you can't simply throw cement into it, because the cement will be pushed. There's a lot of pressure at the bottom of the ocean.
President Obama is coming up with some new oil drilling regulations. That's going to happen tomorrow. And on Friday, he's going back to the Gulf Coast. He's been there last on May 2nd.
But just moments ago, at an event in Fremont, California, he had this to say about the oil spill efforts --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And we just discussed today's attempt to stop the leak through what's known as the top kill, plugging the well with densely-packed mud to prevent any more oil from escaping. If it's successful -- and there's no guarantees -- it should greatly reduce or eliminate the flow of oil now streaming into the Gulf from the sea floor. And if it's not, there are other approaches that may be viable.
And as work continues in the next couple of months to complete relief wells, my administration's intensively engaged with scientists and engineers to explore all alternative options, and we're going to bring every resource necessary to put a stop to this thing. But a lot of damage has been done already. Livelihoods destroyed, landscapes scarred, wildlife affected. Lives have been lost.
Our thoughts and prayers are very much with the people along the Gulf Coast. And let me reiterate, we will not rest until this well is shut, the environment is repaired, and the cleanup is complete. And I look forward to returning there on Friday to review the efforts currently under way and lend my support to the region.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: OK. We'll continue to follow that.
Meanwhile, David Mattingly, part of our team on the Gulf Coast, is joining us now from Robert, Louisiana.
David, what have you got?
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ali, what we're waiting for is to find if there's some confirmation to come back from BP. We know we heard from the Coast Guard, getting the green light from the U.S. government on BP's plans to use the top kill. But the last time we heard from BP, it was CEO Tony Hayward about 7:00 this morning Eastern Time, telling us that they had gone all through the night, diagnosing this procedure underneath the water, and trying to figure out if it's going to work.
He said they were going to meet today to look at all the data and make that big decision. Here's what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Is it safe to say, Mr. Hayward, that the oil industry has pushed the boundaries of drilling, but you haven't made similar advancements in disaster preparedness?
TONY HAYWARD, CEO, BP: I think what this has demonstrated is that whilst very significant progress has been made in terms of surface response, there is clearly the need to have much more preparedness with respect to sub-sea response. That is undoubtedly one of the big lessons from this incident.
(END VIDEO CLIP) MATTINGLY: And while we're looking for progress to be made in stopping the flow from that leak here at this well, listening to Hayward there, this has clearly been a sea change for the entire offshore drilling industry, now having to think about preparing for that disaster that they said would never happen -- Ali.
VELSHI: David, so just to be clear now, this is what we know. We know that the Coast Guard has said they're OK with BP going ahead with this top kill, which involves putting all this mud down, and then following it with cement, trying to kill this well. We do not have confirmation that that has begun?
MATTINGLY: Right. We are waiting for BP right now, who says that they were going to be looking at their data, to actually come out and say, yes, we are doing the top kill.
They have been talking about the top kill since days after this disaster happened. It's taken a long time for them to formulate a plan.
A lot of it had to do with trying to figure out what was broken and what could work with using that failed blowout preventer at the bottom of the ocean. They used sophisticated diagnostic equipment from the U.S. government to essentially get an MRI inside that device.
And this is a huge device, five stories tall. So, it took a long time for them to see what they were working with, and then even longer to figure out how they can make this top kill work.
VELSHI: All right, David. Thanks very much for that. You'll keep us posted. As soon as you get word that this is under way, come back and let us know.
David Mattingly is in Robert, Louisiana.
In fact, we've got a whole team of people down on the Gulf Coast, ready to tell you what's going on with all of this. We've also got some pictures that we are going to be showing you.
We've got eight different webcams. BP has got feeds to eight different webcams that we're following that's showing the oil flow. Some of them are dark at different times. Right now we've give five of them up, plus the one that you're most familiar with, the one that we keep seeing and have been looking at for days.
Let's go to Steve Wereley. He's been with us for the entire show. He's an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, joining me from West Lafayette, Indiana.
So, Steve, we're waiting for this to happen. The Coast Guard has said it's OK to ahead. BP has been planning for this for days.
This top kill method, in plain English, what is it?
STEVE WERELEY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, PURDUE UNIVERSITY: Well, so, the idea is to force mud, heavy drilling mud and concrete, down into the well hole, essentially through the blowout preventer, down into the well hole, and in the hopes of plugging it up. VELSHI: All right. And the reason you have to force this concrete and this heavy drilling mud is because of the pressure, because the oil's shooting out from above it. So we've got to somehow stop that from happening in order to -- long enough to get that cement in there and seal the hole up?
WERELEY: That's correct. This reservoir -- the oil's in a reservoir under the seabed, and it's at tremendous pressure. And so when they -- when BP first stuck the -- first pierced the reservoir, this tremendous pressure drives the oil out.
In fact, that's what caused the blowout or, you know -- so that's what started this all, is this tremendous pressure. And now they have to beat that tremendous pressure and drive the oil and mud down into the well.
VELSHI: There have been a lot of testing, as David Mattingly was saying, of this five-story-tall blowout preventer which is on the seabed. And this is the thing that's supposed to regulate that pressure and determine if there's a problem.
The issue is, we don't really know whether that's working properly, or that's what BP's been testing. Because if you start shooting this mud into there, and it gives way, then you've got oil and the mud next to each other in the water.
WERELEY: That's correct. I mean, the state of the blowout protector is a big unknown in this operation.
It was certainly damaged during the blowout. In fact, I mean, the idea of the blowout protector is that it will pinch off the 22- inch -- 21.5-inch riser pipe before the blowout happens. And that didn't happen. And then it was subsequently damaged in the blowout.
VELSHI: All right. Steve, thanks for staying with us and continuing to help us out and understand this. We're waiting for word that this gets under way. We'll be back to you.
Steve Wereley from Purdue University, helping us understand what that blowout protector this.
All right. Mark Twain said everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. It seems the same thing could be said of our national debt, our government debt. But I'm in search of solutions, and today that is our "Big I." We're not talking science today, we're talking about the debt and how we solve it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Time for our "Big I" today. Every day we give you a big idea, something that actually changes the way that we do things and the way we live. Often, it's science and technology. Today, it is the debt and the deficit, something we're very, very concerned about, more so now because of everything that's happened in Europe.
One of the questions I keep getting is, why isn't what's happening in Greece going to happen to us? So I wanted to tackle this. I wanted to have you understand why we aren't Greece.
First of all, let's start with our public debt here in the United States. This is the U.S. public debt. This is the cause of so many of our concerns.
In 2000, it was $5.6 trillion. In 2005, $7.9 trillion. In 2010, now, $13.8 trillion. In 2015, it's projected to be about $19.7 trillion.
And every year that we have a deficit, that we spend more than we take in, increases the public debt. So this is what we need to tackle, because it's public debt that's been part of the problem in Greece.
Now, how do you judge the effect that everything is going on in Greece has on its credit rating, the market? Well, Greece couldn't afford its public debt. And as a result, people who buy Greek debt, Greek bonds, let me show you what happens there.
You see, this is new here, so I'm trying to get this to work. All right.
This is U.S. national debt. OK? That's judged by the 10-year bond. And when the U.S. borrows money, it pays people an interest rate.
That's been relatively steady over the last three months. OK?
Take a look at that. And now take a look at the Greek -- the cost of borrowing money for the Greeks. It's been going up.
It actually spiked. That was at the height of the crisis, and now it's leveled off. I want you to think about that for one second.
I also want to give you a piece of breaking news. We have just learned here at CNN that the top kill has begun in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to BP, they have begun the effort to kill that well with the top kill method that we have been talking about for days. The top kill has begun in the Gulf of Mexico.
We did learn that once it has begun, it will be 10 to 12 hours before we have a sense of whether it is met with success. But we do have a feed of all of the oil that is coming out underneath. We've got eight cameras on it, and we will be able to look at that as this develops, and we'll keep you posted.
I'll come back to that in just a moment, but the top kill has begun. Perhaps we can keep that in the corner of our screen so we can watch it.
All right. So the bottom line is, people don't think that the U.S. is in the same dangerous position that Greece is, and that is determined by how much it costs America to actually borrow money. You can see that we spend less to borrow money than Greece does.
Now, I want to show you something else. Let's talk about debt around the world.
We think about debt as a percentage of the entire economy. How much is our debt as a percentage of what our entire economy does, all the goods and services produced in one year?
In Zimbabwe, that would be the example of a country that's got out-of-control debt. The debt in Zimbabwe is 304 percent of its entire economy. That's out of control.
Take a look at Italy, 115 percent. That's why they're instituting austerity measures.
Greece, 113 percent. There we are. We're the fourth one, 52 percent of GDP. We're actually a little bit higher than Spain, at 50 percent.
I want to bring in Jared Bernstein -- he's the chief economist to the vice president of the United States -- to have him help us understand why we're not Greece and what we're doing to make sure we never become -- or never get into that situation that Greece is in.
Jared, good to see you.
JARED BERNSTEIN, CHIEF ECONOMIST TO VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Nice to see you, Ali. Thanks for inviting me to talk about this great topic.
VELSHI: Tell me what you think. Why are we not getting there?
BERNSTEIN: To answer the question that you posed, you really have to focus on, really, the two things you've mentioned so far, our growth outlook and our outlook for our fiscal policy, our debt outlook.
Now, if you look at the metric of bond markets, you see that there's a lot of confidence in the U.S. ability to solve this. And I believe that's because the president's agenda has hit this debt problem head on.
Now, you are absolutely right that our debt or our deficit-to-GDP ratio is elevated right now, and it has to be, because, right now, we're fighting a jobs deficit. With unemployment almost 10 percent, this is not the time to cut and run from a very difficult economy.
And, in fact, the more people who are working out there, the more they're contributing to government revenue. That, in itself, helps us right now.
This deficit to GDP ratio is cut by more than half, from about 10.5, 10.6 percent down to around five percent by 2012 in our budget. And we get there by getting the temporary spending, the stimulus, out of the system, people back to work, and contributing again.
VELSHI: Let me ask you this.
BERNSTEIN: At the same time -- sure. VELSHI: Let me ask you this. We've got this on the screen, this graphic that shows our deficit-to-GDP ratio. That is, our deficit, our shortfall, as a percentage of everything that our economy is.
How is it that it's going down from where we are, down to 3.9 percent, by 2014?
BERNSTEIN: Yes. It's a great question.
It has a lot to do with the Recovery Act, $787 billion of stimulus. But the key word here, Ali, is "temporary."
Temporary spending, even significant temporary spending that comes out of the system, does not have a long-term effect on the budget deficit. What does have a long-term effect on the budget deficit? Health care spending that's been out of control.
By wrestling that down, we have, I think, made a really important statement both in terms of our fiscal rectitude, but also to global financial markets about our future long-term fiscal sustainability. And you can see that in the bond markets.
VELSHI: All right. Let me ask you this. There are things that you and the administration can do to try and make sure that things happen the way that that chart just outlined. What are things that are not in your control that could either throw this off or get us into a better financial situation faster than you project?
BERNSTEIN: Well, oftentimes, if new industries take off in ways you can't foresee. Clearly, that happened with the Internet.
Right now, you've got a president who's out there in Fremont, California, at a company that's producing solar panels, and I think a very advanced technology therein. By the way, this is a company that received a Recovery Act grant to help them deal with the constraints in capital markets right now. So they get a loan from us, they get private capital off the sidelines.
That kind of investment can take off, and we certainly saw it in the 1990s, with growth that helped bring the budget into surplus. That's a great way to get your budget not only sustainable, but into surplus, by having upside surprises on the growth.
And, of course, you know, I have to be balanced here. I mean, on the other side, yes, there are potential downsides out there.
Obviously, you talked about Europe. I think the important thing to recognize there is that we are in a very different phase of development now in terms of the business cycle than Europe. I mean, they're kind of going through some of the kind of problems that we saw here a few years ago when Lehman came down. We intervened quickly, forcefully, and we're now on a very positive growth path, and that's been helping.
We've got a lot more to do to get people back to work. You and I know that. But in the right direction. VELSHI: In a perfect world, unemployment would be low, we'd all be earning well, and we'd all be paying taxes, which is some of the problems that Italy and Greece have, that a lot of people evade taxes. We'd all be paying taxes, we'd be buying things, businesses would be doing well, they'd be paying taxes, and basically the private sector deals with this whole issue.
BERNSTEIN: Right.
VELSHI: The economy grows and the government gets lots more money from taxes, and it cuts the deficits and it cuts the debt.
How much of this falls on government? How much of this falls on the private sector building these businesses and people getting more work?
BERNSTEIN: It really depends on what part of the business cycle you're in. Right now, with the private sector still recovering from the deepest recession since the Great Depression, there still remains a significant role for the government to come in there and temporarily make up some of the difference in economic activity, or aggregate demand, if you want to be economic about it, that's missing from the private sector.
But that whole notion, that graph you showed earlier of deficit to GDP, ramping up and then ramping down, is a great symbol for the government getting out of the way. This example I gave a minute ago of the president out there at this solar manufacturer in California today is a great example.
Right now, we can help with credit constraints, but that's seed capital. We have to get off the sidelines, let the private capital come in.
We're not going to grow any industry. We're not going to get the American jobs machine back to where it needs to be. But we can help right now, temporarily, get out of the way and get that fiscal sustainability to come back.
VELSHI: OK. That's the big idea, to try and get the deficit under control.
From the White House, Jared Bernstein is the chief economic adviser to the vice president.
Thanks for taking the time to try to explain that to us, Jared. We'll talk to you again about it.
BERNSTEIN: My pleasure.
VELSHI: And back to our breaking news. Let me just tell you about this. Top kill has begun.
This is BP's effort to stem that oil flow into the Gulf of Mexico. We know they got approval to do it from the Coast Guard. We have just heard from BP, it has begun. It's likely to take several hours before we see a result.
You're looking at live camera feeds from under the ocean. That is the oil spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico.
We do not know what that picture's going to look like if top kill succeeds, but we do have Steve Wereley with us. He's from Purdue. He's an associate professor of mechanical engineering who knows a lot about this.
Steve, you're looking at the same pictures that we're looking at. If we look at this hour after hour after hour, as we will do, will we see something different in this picture that we're looking at? This is the main one that we've been looking at. Will we see something different if top kill is working?
WERELEY: Hopefully we will. So, first of all, I would expect the details of the operation haven't been made available to the general public, and so I'm not aware of the extent of the details. But I would expect a couple of hours of preliminary operations in which nothing much happens.
But then I would imagine when they get to the stage of pumping the mud down into the hole, some of that will start to come out the spill cam, you know, the end of the riser tube, and will be visible on the spill cam.
VELSHI: Steve, I just want to let our viewers know, we are expecting to hear from the CEO of BP very shortly.
You know, Steve, you said we don't have details. They gave sort of -- some sort of technical briefing the other day, but the bottom line is we know in broad strokes, the effort here is to dump a lot of this drilling mud -- which isn't really mud, but it's a heavy substance -- to drop it in there. And what does that do? That forces the oil that's in the pipe already out to leave space to then put cement in and close that hole?
WERELEY: Yes. They're going to try to force this mud down into the well. And the weight of the mud and the pressure of the pump that's pushing it into the blowout protector will hopefully exceed the pressure at which the oil is coming out and plug up the hole.
VELSHI: What kind of pressure are we talking about? This is the big issue here. This isn't just plugging a pipe that's burst, a water pipe that you might even see in a city, like a water main burst. We're talking about substantial pressure at the bottom of the sea.
WERELEY: That's right. This is a -- we're talking about thousands of PSI. And the reservoir, which is below, considerably below the seabed, is at thousands of PSI, still higher pressure. And this is the pressure that they have to defeat in order to keep the mud in the well shaft long enough to harden.
VELSHI: All right. So we're showing a picture of this right now. This is the idea. So we're going down. This is the blowout preventer that you're looking at. This is at the bottom of the sea. It's about five stories tall, just to give you some sense of perspective.
And you can see there that there's oil. You'll see a pipe that's black with oil.
They're going to put that mud in, you're going to see it go brown -- there you go -- and they get that oil out long enough to put cement in. You're going to see that cement momentarily that is going to go white. It's going to harden with cement.
If that succeeds and that blowout preventer itself doesn't blow up in the process because of the pressures we're dealing with, what happens then, Steve? If that process works, how will we know it?
WERELEY: Well, hopefully, what we'll see is, on the spill cam, we'll see the flow will stop. There'll be no more oil coming out of the end of the pipe.
VELSHI: Is there a danger that as you plug that, oil comes out from somewhere else, or we're talking about plugging this right into the seabed and below?
WERELEY: That's right. Well, there is a danger that -- the exact condition of the blowout preventer is uncertain. It definitely was damaged in the explosion, the blowout. And potentially, plugging up the blowout protector could lead to another problem.
VELSHI: Let's talk about option B, or F, wherever we happen to be in this whole process.
If this doesn't work -- and BP's been very careful to say they do not know, they hope it will work, it's their best effort yet, but they don't know. If it doesn't work, they are drilling other holes. This has always been the long-term solution, you drill relief wells.
What's the concept behind that?
WERELEY: Well, the idea is this -- they will, from another location, drill a hole diagonally into the existing well, the existing pipe that runs down to the reservoir, and then pump cement into that location to seal it up. And that would be several thousand feet below the seabed.
VELSHI: All right. I want to bring our viewers up to speed with what's going on.
What you're looking at on the left is the spill cam. That is one of the cameras, the feed provided by BP from well under the surface of the sea.
On the right side, you are looking at BP's command center. It's a joint command center. It's in Houston.
We do understand that BP's CEO, Hayward, will be speaking very shortly. We'll, of course, bring you that. We're expecting for him to give us an update as to what's going on.
Steve Wereley is staying with me. We've got a team of reporters on the Gulf Coast to try and get some sense of what we expect to see, what the timelines are, and how it's going to work.
Stay with us. We're going to take a quick break. We'll continue with this breaking news as soon as we get back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: You're watching breaking news here on CNN.
We just had word that about 25 minutes ago, BP began its top kill. This is its effort, its latest effort to kill that well, the oil that is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico that you can see right here live on this camera.
Now, don't expect to see anything happening with this shot anytime soon. The fact that they have begun the operation does not mean that that 50,000 pounds of mud that they are putting in to try and just sort of get that oil out of the pipe long enough to put cement into it and block that hole, it does not mean that that has begun.
BP did say this is a long and involved operation. Once they begin, it may be several hours before we see a result or know what's going on.
This is a complicated procedure which has best been described to us by engineers and those who understand as getting a heavy mud -- it's called mud, it's not really mud, it's a heavy lubricant -- into that pipe, pushing that oil out one way or the other, pushing it down, clearing the pipe so that cement can follow and seal that hole. BP has said this is not a guaranteed solution, it is the best solution that the joint command has come up with at this point.
We also hear that Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, will be talking to us very shortly, or will be making some sort of a statement very shortly. We expect that statement to be that this process has begun.
There have been some technical briefings by BP involving reporters and others to try and explain what is -- we are now -- I'm just getting -- this is developing as we're talking. We have just been told the briefing that we were expecting to get from Tony Hayward has now been postponed.
You have to understand, this is all developing very quickly. BP has not told us why it's been postponed. We were hearing there was going to be a briefing. Now we're hearing that that's been put off.
But more importantly, what we need to know is whether or not this is going to meet with some success.
And Steve Wereley joins me now. He is with Purdue University, he's the associate professor of mechanical engineering. He's looking at these pictures along with me. On the right, you have an animation, a graphic animation of the blowout preventer, which sits on the bottom of the sea and that is supposed to regulate pressure. The oil comes out of the ground at remarkably high pressures and they've got to contain that. They've got to push that, they've got to work against it to get anything else into that line to block it, Steve, and that is what this top kill operation is.
We understand, Steve, that top kill has worked before. It works on land, it works -- where does it work?
WERELEY: Yes, certainly, it has been shown to work, especially in surface operations and I think even in ocean wells, but not very deep. So this is -- because it's so deep, there are a number of challenges.
VELSHI: What's your sense of it? I mean, people you talk to, does this sound like the best effort at this point? Does it sound like it's likely to work?
And what's the mystery here? For guys like you that study engineering, what's the mystery? The fact that it's the bottom of the sea and pressures are different than they are not as deep down?
WERELEY: Well, I think, probably, there are two things. There are two important variables here.
The first is, the unknown condition of the blowout protector. You know, nobody's quite sure what's going on in there. BP has taken some X-rays of the blowout protector to try to assess what the damage may have been during the blowout.
VELSHI: And what's the issue there? If it's damaged -- this is the thing we're looking at, right now on the screen, on your right, this is the blowout preventer. It's about five stories tall, just to give you some perspective, and it sits on the ocean floor and it is supposed to be the thing that regulates pressure of the oil coming up. What's the issue there? If it's damaged, what could happen?
WERELEY: Well, if it's damaged, some part of it could fail and oil could start leaking from that point. But really, let's say suggesting what might be wrong with the blowout protector is difficult to say at this point. You know, how it might fail is difficult to say, just that it could fail.
VELSHI: Let me understand this, Steve. I was just talking to Steven Leib, a guest of ours, about sort of how we get into the -- by the way, what you're looking at here are five feeds of eight that we are getting from BP. Those are five that are active right now. They're various views from under the sea about what is going on with that. This is how we're going to monitor the success here.
Steve, what Steven was saying to us is that we seem to know, perhaps, less about the mechanics and the physics of drilling for oil that deep into the sea than we may have been led to believe we know. We haven't had these kinds of experiences before. WERELEY: Yes. One thing I could say there is, I think that we know quite a bit, or the petroleum companies know quite a bit about extracting the resources, extracting the oil from below the seabed. They don't seem to be quite as well versed in recovery operations, you know, capping the well. That seems to have prevented a particular challenge here.
VELSHI: Well, one of the frustrations, and certainly ones we're hearing from others like Senator Bill Nelson, is why don't we get the military in with a command structure that's understood and with the resources to get this done.
What's your sense of -- has BP got the best engineers on this? Are these the people to get this job done or are there others who can get this job done?
WERELEY: I think BP's got the petroleum engineers they need to get the job done. The question is, you know, they are working in their stockholder's interests as well as in the interests of the American people, so they have a bit of divided loyalties.
VELSHI: Although at this point, you would say it would be in everybody's interest. I can't imagine BP wants anymore of this oil to flow out, given the reputation damage they've taken and the financial damage of cleaning this whole thing up.
What happens if we -- you were telling me a little earlier, they've got a couple of steps between seeing whether this top kill thing works, and that could be several hours from now, and the next thing that they do and we were talking about this. They're going to drill a hole diagonally, I think they started this process, into the same pipe, so basically siphon off that oil. What's that's going to do, if they have to get to that?
WERELEY: That's right. They've started -- they have started two wells. One that was a few days after the disaster, after the explosion, and one that started just a few days ago. So there are two wells that are currently being drilled to intercept the well that's currently leaking. And they're projected to intersect the well that's currently leaking in August. So we really hope that something happens, you know, to stop the oil before then.
VELSHI: OK. You're looking at a live picture from under the sea. This is a picture of the oil coming out, that is what we are going to be watching to see whether anything changes there as this top kill procedure continues.
Stay with us, we're continuing our coverage of the top kill in the Gulf of Mexico.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: All right, continuing our breaking news here on CNN -- the top kill procedure has begun in the Gulf of Mexico.
Let me just tell, we're trying to figure this out. That picture you're looking at right now has been going in and out. It's a live shot that -- I'm asking my executive producer right now -- Kelly, this is not a live shot.
Now I want to put up that grid of the pictures, of the various cameras that we have, and get a sense of what's going on there. Those are the various shots that we've got. We're trying to figure out why there's instability with these pictures, because we are assured that BP is not going to pull these feeds. But as you can see, some of them are going in and out. The top kill process has begun.
I'm joined by Steve Wereley. He's a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University at Indiana, he knows a whole lot about what's going on here. The first thing, to bring our viewers up to speed, Steve, no matter what happens, we are not likely to see an immediate effect. So as we're looking at a picture, whether it's a live picture of a web cam with oil flowing out, we're not really expecting to see that oil stop in the next few hours.
WERELEY: Yes. I haven't seen an exact timeline. I don't think such a document has been released to the general public. But I would think, you know, given the complexity of the operation, there's going to be an hour, two hours of preliminary operations before they start pouring the concrete.
VELSHI: Where does this take place from? From vessels above the well, basically?
WERELEY: Yes. So BP has a command center above the well from which they're directing all of these ROVs, and there's something like 14 of them on site.
VELSHI: You say ROVs?
WERELEY: Yes, the remote-operated vehicles, remote-controlled submarines.
VELSHI: Yes. So this is all being done that way, and these are submarines that work in deep water.
The issue here is that we do know the concept of top kill, forcing the oil down with pressure and then putting cement in, we know the concept works. What, from an engineering perspective, is the problem? The reason why even BP is giving it a 60 percent to 70 percent chance of working?
WERELEY: Well, there's two things, really. First is we don't know the condition of the blowout preventer. It was damaged during the blowout and we don't know what condition it's in.
The second is that it's -- this is a mile underneath the surface of the ocean, so you can't just back up a cement truck and start pouring concrete in the hole. It's all done by robots on the bottom of the ocean. They're all driven by joysticks and it makes things more complicated.
VELSHI: I don't know how much detail you know about this, but we've got this one picture on the air. This is one of the eight shots that we've got. Do we know what this is that we're looking at?
WERELEY: It looks like some structure on the surface of the blowout preventer, but no, not precisely, I don't know.
VELSHI: The blowout preventer is a five-story tall structure that sits on the bottom of the ocean and in the middle of that is the well, basically sits on top of the hole in the ocean.
Let me ask you this, may be a stupid question, but the structure, the condition of that blowout preventer seems to be a big variable here, Steve. Has the option existed of pushing that blowout preventer off or somehow toppling it and getting right to that hole. Because the issue is, we need to stop the oil under the blowout preventer, correct?
WERELEY: Yes. The thing that the blowout preventer is still providing is a number of access points to pipes that travel -- a number of, let's say, convenient coupling points to couple into the well shaft. That's the thing that it still provides and that's the reason why it's still in use.
VELSHI: So it's a good way to do that, as opposed to dealing with a hole in the middle of the ocean, they can seal off, use the blowout preventer to help them attach whatever they need to attach or get pipes out there or something of that nature?
WERELEY: That's correct.
VELSHI: All right.
What's your sense, what's your distant evaluation of this? Is this the direction they should be going in? I only ask you that, because we have reports of all sorts of criticisms saying, here's an obvious way to do it or they've done this somewhere else in the world. Does this seem like it makes sense as an approach to try to stop the oil from flowing into the Gulf of Mexico?
WERELEY: Yes, I think this make sense and I think it's an operation they can prepare for in the short-term, in the near-term. They've clearly got to do something or try something prior to August. If the U.S. public sees -- if they just waited until August, until those -- the relief wells intersected the damaged well, that would be a public relations nightmare.
VELSHI: And when you say waiting until August, they've started drilling those, as you said, they're trying to drill two other holes.
These are the eight cameras, by the way, that we're looking at, at any given time, one or two of them are not broadcasting a signal, but that's what we're looking at. The one on the top left of your screen, you can see that quantity of oil that is flowing out into the Gulf of Mexico.
So, Steve, you've got those two wells that they're trying to drill, and they're saying it could take three months. Tell me about that process. Why does it take so long to drill wells? Just because you're drilling into hard core?
WERELEY: Yes, it's solid rock. And it's a challenging operation, trying to pierce one well with another. But that's the sort of operation that the petroleum industry has refined the technology for.
VELSHI: And ultimately, that technology exists. We actually know how to do that. In fact, I guess it's fair to say, that while this could take a long time, we do have confidence that ultimately this well will be killed?
WERELEY: Yes. I believe that -- certainly August, it will -- that operation will succeed.
VELSHI: But the damage at that point could be so catastrophic that and the costs involved if that, so their hope -- so between this, the top kill, which we're trying to do now and the drilling of those wells, which might not be completed until August, they've got some steps in between that they might try?
WERELEY: Well, I've heard various ideas reported. I mean, the junk shot was reported in the media last week and I'm not sure why they didn't end up going with that, but this seems to be more dependable, if you ask me, this top kill.
VELSHI: All right. Steve, thanks very much for helping us make sense of this.
Steve Wereley is with Purdue University, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. He's been helping us understand the top kill, which has begun, begun less than an hour ago, by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. Steve, thank you very much.
Our team is standing by on the Gulf of Mexico to bring us up to speed on exactly what's going on. Stay with us, we'll be right back in a second.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: OK. We're continuing to follow this breaking news -- the top kill procedure has begun in the Gulf of Mexico. That is BP's effort to try to kill this well by dumping somewhere north of 50,000 pounds of drilling mud. It's called mud, it's not really mud. It's a heavy lubricant that is meant to be a counterforce to the oil that is coming out of that well. If they succeed with that, they'll stick cement in behind it and seal that hole for good.
David Mattingly is in Robert, Louisiana, with more on this. He joins us now live as part of our team coverage of this oil spill.
David, what do you know?
MATTINGLY: Ali, what we know right now is that BP has started that top kill procedure where they're pumping that liquid that's twice as heavy as water into the system, inside that blowout preventer. It's -- now it's just a matter of pressure. Can they exert enough pressure with that liquid to counteract the pressure of the oil coming up? They're essentially trying to drown this well in this heavy liquid so that that oil stops coming out and gives them the chance to seal this off with cement.
VELSHI: David, what's your sense of -- have they given us any sense, last I heard that it could be ten hours before we know whether this is working. How will they know and what sense do we have of it from BP?
MATTINGLY: Well, I listened to a technical briefing that they gave yesterday morning and then we were told that this is a procedure that should take about ten hours. And then today, we're hearing from BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, this morning, and he is saying that it could be a couple of days before they know that this procedure is working the way it's supposed to.
But regardless, there's no magic moment in this procedure where they flip a switch and suddenly the oil goes off. This is a painstaking process that they have to monitor constantly. It's not just where they're just flooding this thing with liquid. They're watching it very closely, it's a very scientific process and they're trying to make sure they do it right, because this is their best shot, Ali, to shut this oil off.
VELSHI: And we're all hoping that it works. I was just talking to Steve Wereley, engineer, and he was telling me, this is all done remotely. This is all being controlled remotely, all done remotely. It's not like there are humans down there at 5,000 feet, trying to get things into place.
MATTINGLY: Right. This is a whole world that they've created down there that's all been handled by remote control. Some of these robotic devices, these submersible tools that they're using, they're huge. Some of them are as big as small sports cars, some can be as big as minivans.
They've had some very specific tasks to do throughout all of this. They've had to conduct some repairs on the blowout preventer, they've had to assist in examining the blowout preventer, and of course, they're doing a lot more than just providing that camera for us down there at the bottom. Those devices have been the human hands by remote to make this procedure happen.
VELSHI: All right. Stay with us for a second, there, David.
I want to -- on the phone, I've got Eric Smith. He's with the Tulane Energy Center, Tulane University. He's joining us to get some sense of the sort of -- give us some sense of whether this is going to work.
You've been following this very closely, Eric, what's your sense of how successful this top kill is going to be?
ERIC SMITH, CONSULTANT TO THE DEAN, TULANE ENERGY CENTER (via telephone): Well, I tend to be a little more optimistic than Tony Hayward is. I think it's probably got a very strong chance of being successful. If I were a betting man, I would bet on it.
VELSHI: Why?
SMITH: Because we've done it numerous times and I think everybody is over concerned about the water depth issue. I don't really -- we've drilled wells and successfully completed wells in water twice this depth. So I don't get as concerned about water depth.
VELSHI: OK. Let's examine that. You're a veteran of this. You've been in the business for over three decades, or you were in the business for over three decades. You say we've done stuff at twice the depth, but we haven't done a top kill at twice the depth, right? We've drilled at twice the depth.
SMITH: That's exactly right. I said we have drilled and completed wells in this water depth. And the procedures, as you have described them, and as you saw wells' description of them over at the technical review earlier.
I think that everything about a top kill that they're doing, inside the well bore it doesn't care what the water depth is. It could be in the middle of the desert or in the middle of the sea, the well bore is concerned about what the pressure is in the reservoir. And what you're trying to do is counterbalance that pressure.
VELSHI: Let me just understand that for a second. The reservoir is where the oil is, well under the ocean, and there's a natural pressure to that. There's a pressure there that when a hole is drilled into it will force the oil out. Correct?
SMITH: Exactly right.
VELSHI: OK. And the pressure there is quite high. I don't know what it is, but we keep hearing from people, it's very, very high.
SMITH: Yes. My guess is it's pushing 10,000 pounds per square inch.
VELSHI: And this effort of top kill, explain to me what the relationship is between heavy mud and high pressure. What does the mud do that somehow counteracts that force with which the oil is coming out of the ground? Because that's what we have to achieve.
SMITH: Right. And the way we rate drilling muds is how much weight a foot column of it, one inch, square inch, in a cross- sectional area would weigh. And for the mud they're using, it's probably between 15 and 20 pounds per foot.
So you take that number and multiple it by the total depth of the riser, 5,000 feet to the sea floor and then 13,000 feet down to through producing area. And 18,000 feet of 20-pound mud -- or 15- pound mud would give you something like 14,000 pounds of hydrostatic pressure, without any pumping or anything else. Just the weight of the mud is 14,000 pounds per square inch. VELSHI: So, basically, for us non-engineers, this is pretty basic. We're going to force this oil -- are we forcing it back down into the well or forcing it --
SMITH: We're forcing it back down into the reservoir.
VELSHI: OK, into the reservoir. Let's use that accurate term then. We're going to force this back down into the reservoir, follow it with cement? Is that correct?
SMITH: And cement goes on top to seal it permanently.
VELSHI: OK. So the thing that can go wrong here, the thing that you're worried about, the 30 percent, and the thing that everybody else is worried about is whether or not this blowout preventer, this five-story-high thing that sits on top of the hole at the bottom of the ocean can withstand all of this pressure and counter-pressure that's going into it?
SMITH: Yes. I think we can -- my concern is less about the BOP stat (ph) taking the pressure as the casing, which is the pipeliner that goes all the way down the length of the well that's in staged in five or six different thickness and diameters of pipe and in each case is a cement seal at each level.
And my guess is that some of those seals are damaged and so it wouldn't surprise me that you might learn some circulation and add some pressure as a result of that leakage.
VELSHI: Eric, I don't know if you can see the pictures that we're looking at, but these cameras, eight of them, are being controlled by BP, and this particular one is moving quite a bit. We don't know whether these cameras -- I'm assuming these cameras, these pictures we've been seeing are instrumental in some way in monitoring the effect of this top kill, or is that not true, Eric?
SMITH: No, I think the ROV is sort of a combination eyes, ears, and pickup truck of the system. So they're very instrumental in following what's going on.
VELSHI: But would you know what to look for from these pictures that we're going to be watching live? Would you know what it is we're supposed to be looking for over the course of the next few hours, other than the obvious one to me, that one that's gushing oil stops gushing?
SMITH: Stops gushing. I think that's a good clue.
I think other things you would look at on the surface if the flare boom -- if the flare goes out on the drill ship, that would mean that there's no gas or less gas coming up to the surface.
Down below, they've probably got a couple of these things watching the BOP stack looking for any leaks of mud, as the pressure increases in the bore. They probably got a couple looking around at the seafloor to see if there are any leaks coming up around the outside of the water.
VELSHI: When this stops, when it stops, if it works and within the next few hours, if we see that the flow of that pipe has stopped, what is the definitive answer to knowing that that well is done, that that well has been killed? Is it immediate if that oil flow stops, or if there's some danger, an explosion, are we waiting for that cement to harden? What tells us this is done?
SMITH: Well, remember, the ultimate thing that tells you that it's done is when they complete the relief well and plug it from the bottom. We're trying to do this all from the top, which is great, but the well is technically not finished until sometime in August they finish that relief well and pump cement into the bottom of this well and kill the reservoir formation, the ferocity of that formation around the base of the well.
VELSHI: Eric, answer me this. If this is the big effort to do this, why would this not have been started -- we're 37 days into this. Why would this not have been done weeks ago? Is it because we kept thinking other things would work?
SMITH: Yes, I think that sort of the mindset of the engineers is that they go out there and they've got ten things they can do and they pick the things that are the lowest risk. They don't want to do any harm, so they do the things that have the least, you know, risk of making the problem worse first. And certainly all of the things we're talking about are paltives instead of finally drilling the relief well.
VELSHI: So that is the answer we know will work, the relief will can take a long time, it will be August, but they can kill this well doing it that way.
SMITH: Absolutely. And they're drilling two of them because if one of the relief wells ran into trouble, the other could proceed unimpeded. But they don't need two.
VELSHI: I'll remind our viewers what happened here. BP, a little less than one hour ago announced that it has begun its top kill operation, which is the effort to force heavy drilling mud down, get that oil out of the well, the bore, and then follow it with cement and seal that well off.
Eric Smith on the phone with me from Tulane is saying that he thinks it's got up to a 70 percent chance of working and that we might be overly concerned with the issue of pressure at the bottom of the ocean that might affect that blowout preventer. You'll hear that referred to as a bop. That is what we're looking at right now. It's a five-story-high unit that is supposed to regulate pressure at the bottom of the ocean.
Eric, again, you're still saying that we're being overly cautious. That Tony Hayward from BP is being overly cautious. I guess they're trying to manage expectations?
SMITH: I think so. I think they have a plan "B" and a plan "C." They're not doing, for example, people were all excited about the junk shot. The problem with the junk shot, it plugs up the BOP and you can't use the BOP for anything else if it doesn't work. Whereas this one, if it fails, they've got the chance of putting a top hat on top, you know, cutting away the old riser and putting a top hat on it.
And if that doesn't work, they can lower another BOP stack on it. And if that doesn't work, then they would go in and probably do the junk shot.
VELSHI: Eric, are these the right people on the job? We keep hearing a lot of criticism about, let somebody else take over. Have we got the best people on the job that we could have?
SMITH: I think so. This is the A-team, and quite frankly, if you tried to change the management structure at this point, it would just delay things. I think that BP is not spinning on spending the money on having the best talent available.
VELSHI: Eric, stay with us, please. You're making a lot of sense of this for us and we need you to guide us through the process.
Rick is with me right now. He's going to take over for me right now.
