If there was enough data to trend it, we could see if it was increasing, stable or decreased, even if it was only 1% of any total leak. It would help to settle any doubts some people may have.

Satellite and radar images show no oil currently on the surface around the wellhead.

I've followed some of the identifiable skimmers on the AIS, and the big skimmers haven't found work to do since around August 1 when the main slick disappeared. The skimming collection total went static around July 20, five days after the hard cap was closed. (Totals are posted on the Response page, under "current ops.") Small vessels have remained active in inshore Louisiana areas, mainly around Breton Sound and Barataria Bay. The small spill at Bayou St. Denis may have sent significant amounts into Barataria Bay.

lotus - So true. And you should see what I Photoshopped onto mummsie's blue toes.

lotus: Good point and well taken. Blue has always been my favorite color though. Heh! Heh!

Limited extracts OK, full quotes a no no unless under a permissive license such as appropriate copyleft. Still, I have to ignore a blogger who cannot spell Lambert let alone who ignores the fact that the ROVs are using Universal Transverse Mercator. A question for our geographical bods, does the translation of co-ordinates into Lambert do anything that the CT guys are latching onto? Lambert seems to be cropping up a lot in the last week.

NAOM

IMVHO, a small sin, easily forgiven in the pursuit of scamster-busting. "Go, my child, and sin no more!" (until the next time ;-)

"Artiste de BS" -- I like that as a term.

PS to beachmommy: Speaking of toesies, I hope you caught this YouTube a couple of days ago (I put it into a reply to someone else -- which I can't find now -- but was really bringing it for you).

My bad Lotus, I am at work and saw it on a CT page and out of laziness just copied everything and then the link (half the time I even forget that).....I noticed he had BKLim's article, and had no copywright or any other disclaimer at the bottom after I went back to look at the site when I read your post, I usually see some sort of a disclaimer that states do not reproduce etc., Also, I couldn't delete the post as the comments are closed, so if TOD thinks it would be best pls delete. I just though it was interesting how he popped on here and the CT sites within a day but I do apologize again and next time promise just a link and the "toesies" for a more seductive, teasing post.

Acorn -- Not 100% sure but I think no lock down collar...an early criticism. Otherwise I have a similar jumble view as you. Not as many "what if's" as before but still a few important ones left IMHO.

Hi Acornus, I've had a stab below in italics:

Let's take a breath here and summarise what we have.
The static kill put a lot of cement into the production casing (liner). casing yes, liner is not the correct word here. Some went into the formation; some may have been squeezed into the annulus between the production casing and the well bore casing. Not quite - actually the annulus between the production casing and the rock face of the open hole
The production casing is locked to the well head with a seal assembly. The integrity of this seal is in question according to the Admiral. The seal is part of the production casing hanger assembly located at the well head. I am not sure but, I think this hanger has a lock down collar fitted to stop it being lifted off its seating by a well pressure kick ???. Yes. In fact as I understand it, simply latching the casing hanger into its profile in the wellhead already provides a lot of seal capacity. The lock down ring (missing in the case of Macondo, planned to be installed later) provides additional security.
The production casing - the inner tube of all the tubes - has some hundreds of feet ??? of cement in it. Yes apparently around 5000 ft. Some cement went into the oil formation and some, I suggest, may have gone up the outside of the well bore casing _ the outer tube of all the tubes - if there was a channel for it to go through the rock bore.The 200 bbl that exited the bottom of the production casing would have been enough to make it up past the previous casing shoe (the 9 7/8) and into the space between casings, and if there were no losses to the formation, then yes there could now be overlap between the annular cement and the previous casing string. This is rather hard to imagine because the cement is being pumped into a closed system and the annular pressure would presumably rise towards leak off pressure quite rapidly, and the fracture gradient is thought to be as low as 13.5 ppg.
The original drill pipe is hanging from the BOP valves to a depth of 8000 feet ??? 8000ft from sea level originally and so 3000 ft below the BOP. The static kill may or may not have put cement into the drill pipe. It depends if the crimped end of it has a route back to the kill line on the BOP - which valves are open or shut below the capping stack ??? yup.
The annulus surrounding the production casing may be full of a liquid or a gas; and some cement. If we assume the hanger seal is still good; would it make sense to drill into the annulus, high up nearer the surface (mud-line); with the relief well; prepare for a gas pressure; hold it and; fill, under gravity, the whole f*****g annulus with cement. No - among other things the relief well would have to penetrate all of the other casing strings to reach the production casing annulus.The cement will either go into the formation; up the production casing or into the gap outside the well bore. Squeezing the annulus space no longer a problem. Discuss; marks will be given for innovative solutions. All the best :-)

Yes, very good overview, NRD -- thanks for the link.

The only real news to me: "Some science suggests the sustained exposure to low concentrations of oil and oil byproducts in water or other environments can affect the growth of fish. A paper co-authored by Oceana’s Jeff Short concluded that pink salmon embryos were harmed by proximity to extremely low concentrations of weathered oil and its byproducts on gravel or other media."

Wish he'd expanded a bit more on that.

This article repeats the same mistake that all the other articles make, interpreting the government's oil budget as saying "74% of the oil is gone." Given that the oil budget report was unintelligible, that was a forgivable mistake, but you'd hope somebody would have noted Jane Lubcheco's correction. She said more than 50% of the oil is gone, but they don't know how much. (Those percentages are based on amount flowed, including captured, not on amount spilled.)

I was interested in the linked article's oil budget for Ixtoc:

50% evaporated
12% bio- or photo-degraded (seems surprisingly low)
25% sank
7% landed.

50% evaporated won't happen here, because the deep-water release led to dispersion and the dissolving of some of the light fractions in the water column. In an article I linked yesterday, Joye estimated only 10% evaporated. Again that might be including the captured oil in the total, a constant source of confusion for reporters.

Tar--the article reports a shrinkage rate of Ixtoc tar deposits that suggests a half-life of around 10 years. Asphaltenes in typical LSL crude are 5%. I wish we had an an assay of fresh Macando crude--only weathered samples have been tested. Will 5-10% of the spilled oil be reduced to tar?

Ironic that the BP-funded Brooks McCall cruise is forthcoming with data, while the government ones are not. However, as we know, BP is signing up researchers to do work that won't be made known unless it's in BP's interest. Repeating myself here, but it's a shame that the government has this conflict of interest between a duty to inform the public and a duty to fight BP in court. I can see a reason for the (probable) high-balling of flow rates, but I don't see why they shouldn't release raw data on water samples.

[edit: Oops, I see that NOAA does have raw data from various cruises posted on their site.]

If the federal data won’t be forthcoming in the near term, perhaps state agencies will report something. It may be worth browsing for state research reports

Don't count on it unless John Q. Public goes on the rampage. Although if things keep going the way they have been, that's a possibility. I never thought I'd see this happen in the United States, even with my experience of the world of academe. The op-ed writer below apparently is firing the first shot over the bows of the opposition. If you do not care to register at the site, the two excerpts from her detailed article will give you the gist of her arguments. What good is research if it can't be published? And those of you who have published, know exactly what I'm talking about. $$$

http://www.the-scientist.com/templates/trackable/display/news.jsp?type=n...

"...In southern Alabama back in late May, my PhD student's ant samples were taken away by a US Fish and Wildlife officer at a publicly accessible state Wildlife Management Area because our project hadn't been approved by Incident Command (also called the Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command -- which is a joint program of BP and federal agencies, such as the Coast Guard, the Department of the Interior, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, assembled to respond to problems related to the April 20 blowout).
...If I were to agree to submit my data, thus officially participating in NRDA, I would be required to sign a confidentiality agreement that lacks an officially specified end date. Exactly when my students or I would be able to publish any results from this research would be determined by the Department of Justice (DOJ), which would make that decision based on the status of a civil suit brought against BP. Were I to accept research funding directly from BP or from one of their contractors, I'd have to sign a contract that includes a three-year no publication clause. If I signed either a contract to work with NRDA or to work under BP or one of their contractors, I would have virtually unlimited access to study sites and more research support."

lab - It might confuse many because it's about a simple as it sounds. I drill a well to 15,000'. My last liner was set at 12,000'. It is hanging from my surface csg set at 4,000'. Didn't find any oil/NG in that last 3,000' of hole but I do have a nice oil sand at 11,000'. So I set my cmt plug in the bottom the csg at 12,000'. I now take a new 4,000' section of csg the same size as my liner set between 4,000' and 12,000'. I attach this new csg into the top of my liner at 4,000'. I have now "tied back" my last liner to the surface, which by definition, makes it my production csg.

This is a common criticism of the BP csg design (http://www.energy.gov/open/documents/3.1_Item_2_Macondo_Well_07_Jun_1900...). Instead of running production csg from the bottom of the well to the well head many operators would have run just a liner over the last section of the BP well and cmtd it in place. This would have isolated the annulus both above and below the oil reservoir. Having done that they would tie back that liner to the surface. This way there would be only one path for the oil to the surface: up the inside of the tied back liner (now called the production csg). They then could have set an addition csg cast iron plug or another cmt plug in the bottom of the csg to make sure this potential flow path was eliminated. At least this is what I believe Shell Oil and a few others said to Congress they would have done as a safety factor.

Lotus, regarding your comment on the previous thread:
"Hi, ruby. Dunno but I bet $5 that Vogelsang's talking about that small blowout just offshore Grand Isle (wasn't it?) the other day."

Are you talking about the blowout in the sugar cane field--isn't that inland? Is there another blowout offshore?

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/100503199.html

Dimitry,

If you are referring to this photo it looks like the points connected by lines are predicted pressures from a model, based on different scenarios for the flow path, as noted in the legend at the right. The closely spaced symbols at the left of the graph are more likely to be actual data from two different pressure sensors. Under this interpretation, the data ends after 350 barrels were pumped. Would be interesting to see the rest of the data.

Hi Dimitry,

I didn't quite get those plots either at first.

They were pumping 13.2 ppg mud at 5 b/min. The start point prior to pumping was around 7000psi at the BOP, perfectly balanced with reservoir pressure at, say, 10200 psi at the base of the well. When they opened the choke valve to surface they would have seen about 5000 psi at the boat (base oil in the line following the injectivity test).

Their plot looked like this :

The simulated pressures actually got as low as 1900psi in all cases, prior to rising to around 3800 psi. I think the ambient pressure line you were talking about was just a reference line; there are 2 of them, one for a brine hydrostatic in the lines to surface, and one for 6.6ppg base oil. I'm not really sure why they are there.

My interpretation would be :

- pressure at BOP starts at 7000psi plus whatever delta-P required to overcome any frictional losses and provide injection overbalance (both probably minimal)
- pressure slowly reduces at the BOP as reservoir fluid is re-injected into the formation and is replaced in the casing by the denser mud (but pressure slowly increases downhole as the head gets larger).
- at some point the increase in head is enough to overbalance the reservoir by the amount required to inject oil at the required rate without application of surface pressure at the boat. The mud is flowing into the well on its own, and pressure at the BOP can drop very low
- at the moment that the mud reaches the reservoir, the injection characteristics change; either the mud begins to form a filter cake and pressures have to spike to keep injecting at 5 b/min, or the pressures spike due to change in the viscosity of the injected fluid (now mud not oil), or some similar process
- this causes the rise in BOP pressure back up to 3900 psi

Its not clear to me what happened when they stopped pumping; there must have been a filter cake of sorts otherwise the mud loss would have been very large (the overbalance at 13.2 ppg to surface is more than 2000 psi). Wells said they were topping up at 300 b/d. If true then the well was 'relatively' static and you'd expect around 3400 psi at the BOP for zero pressure at the boat.

They have of course now cemented the well. Again, if static and with 13.2 ppg mud in the lines to surface the pressure should be around 3400 psi. It is only reported at 4200 psi because they are maintaining a positive pressure with the mud pumps. This may have been to test for leak paths initially, but the reasons for maintaining it are not clear to me.

This appears to mean, to my untrained eye, that the static kill has, effectively, failed. Further, it appears that the "static kill" has also complicated the problems associated with the relief wells, causing numerous delays.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The static kill did what it did. It sent mud and then cement down the production casing. That means oil can no longer flow up the production casing and out the defective BOP like it did for almost 3 mos.

Prior to the blow out on April 20 the annulus (the space between the production casing and the outer well liner) was supposed to be isolated from the reservoir by cement (assuming the cement did its job). If nothing changed then it still is. But there is no way to know that since there is no direct way to test what is in the annulus or how much pressure it contains. If nothing has changed then the annulus is hydro-statically balanced with mud and sealed off at the bottom with about 800 feet of cement that separates it from the reservoir.

When the intercept with the relief well (maybe next week) they will connect with the annulus and find out what is going on in that part of the well. They now say they are going to conduct a test that may or may not give them some advance information of what they will find.

Grey -- Not sure but I think I know what might be confusing: If you're expecting any pressure measured anywhere in the sytem to be zero you will always be disappointed. If there were 13,000' of cmt completely filling the csg the pressure at the bottom of the well will be almost 12,000 psi (the pressure in the rock at that depth). And the pressure in the BOP while the riser is still attached will be over 3,200 psi. Even after the riser is removed and the BOP is just sitting on the sea floor with the well completely plugged the pressure in the BOP will be 2,300 psi (the pessure of the water column). There is no such natural condition as zero pressure below the surface of the earth. The pressure at the bottom of a 100' deep fresh water lake is around 40 psi.

But I'm not arguing the cmt job is leaking or not. Just describing the pressure regimes we're looking at.

Hi, Dimitry. Our pal Swift Loris has some cherce words for that one.

I hadn't clicked through to it before, but it has enough info to invite further investigation, so I'll actually go read a bit now (though on notice that it's somewhat hinky).

It reminds me of a label I saw on a can of peanuts the other day. "Pure Sea Salt".

Oxymoronic of course. The sea contains the entire periodic table in various amounts.

Dimitry - here is a short summary of your link :

"BP and the government say the spill is fast disappearing—but dramatic new science reveals that its worst effects may be yet to come." ...

"We know that the deep scattering layer in the Gulf of Mexico—like the DSL everywhere—supports huge numbers and biomass of life," says Benoit-Bird, who has spent time studying the Gulf's sperm whales.
"We know the DSL is super important to the life of those waters.
We know it's constantly on the move, not only up and down, but inshore and offshore, back and forth, every day and every night.
This greatly increases the likelihood that any given animal or layers of life will be exposed to the pollutants at some point in the course of their travels.
And each of these exposures will cascade up and down through the food web.""

"Some early observations of the effects of the Gulf catastrophe suggest the daily vertical migrations of the animals of the deep scattering layer may be blocked when they encounter plumes of oil and contaminants. If so, then trapped below a plume, the DSL fish and invertebrates would be unable to access their prey.
Trapped above, they would be unable to escape their predators. Trapped within, they would probably die—and in their deaths, poison those who eat them.
For the ocean, any loss of productivity in the deep scattering layer would be the biggest cataclysm of all—impoverishing the surface waters, depleting the coasts, cascading across the boundaries between ocean and land to denude both natural and human economies." ...

Doesn't sound like much of a "rebellion" to me, hasbeen. "We are particularly interested in whether individual rigs or categories of rigs are sufficiently safe to allow the moratorium to be lifted" equals "rebellion" to you? Fails the straight-face test, doesn't it?

Check your facts on Reilly. He was GHWB's EPA head.

GJNL

This is from early this morning when it appeared that the ROV became stranded there.

Something was really making the video pulsate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SZ9ZP5qx7s

GJNL, I'm curious ... just why do you think what is shown in the YouTube video is "Methane storm?" What is the defining chareristic that make you see methane?

I'm serious. I simply don't understand what you are seeing that is the definitive indicator for methane. Would you please explain.

I interpret it somewhat differently.

If you'll look carefully, I believe that you will discover that the "horizon," demarcating the boundary between the light area in front from the shadow behind it, shifts in tandem with the passage of silt floating across it, giving the illusion of a pulsating bottom because it changes the shape of the shadow thrown by the light.

Critical thinking involves looking at events, behaviors, scenes, etc. through several "lenses" and choosing what the best explanation is, and if it's something that instills fear in us, we should especially consider the alternative interpretations.

Remember the boogey man in the closet, or under the bed, or standing next to the bed, and how real they seemed until we looked at them with the light on.

I remember walking back to my quarters at night one summer while I was working at a summer camp for kids.

I heard a strange noise that I couldn't identify, kind of a hissing sound. When I moved closer it moved away, when I moved back, it followed me. I spent several minutes trying to determine what it was and even though I'm hardly an alarmist by nature, I was seriously considering the possibility that it was an alien life form, until I moved a little closer and felt a drop of water. It was an oscillating sprinkler.

I felt stupid, and perhaps even slightly disappointed. I've fallen for several false impressions since, and probably still can, but I've learned to better challenge my perceptions as I got older.

Probably within a couple of hundred years I'll be a little less excitable.

I see amphipods and small fish scooting around and some sediments blowing around in the currents.
It's interesting how the turbidity clouds, the very fine sediments in the water, behave much the same as maybe fog banks or clouds in the air, even to the extent of forming vortices. The currents are fascinating to observe.

In Re: All of these claims of gas eruptions and methane bubblings and such, I would expect that if that were happening on any considerable scale the bubbles and rising gas would create currents that would flow toward the area of the gas release then upward with the gas. Entraining currents or some such fluid dynamic thing. I suspect it would look different from what we're seeing and would not just clear up after five or ten minutes as in (most of) these videos. Every time these ROVs move on or near the bottom, they cause turbidity storms. The thrusters are on their lower quarters and they blast off from the bottom in clouds of muck.

I agree with you that BP isn't giving us much to go on, especially in the light of the pressure being held in the stack even after a so-called static kill. That's just weird.
My money is on some kind of flow path still being open, somewhere, somehow.

So, it's about time for the amphipod daily show.
Time to go check some video....

All shrimp, no sea monkeys.

Plus 12 minutes of my life down the tubes. Isn't that what they say you lose with each cigarette? I really want one now (it's been three years since my last - thanks, G).

No offense, though. I'm glad people are watching.

The best sentence in the cavnar-article is :

"CLEAR AS DRILLING MUD." ---- LOL !

It gives me pleasure that even the experts are confused about what´s going on.

tod - I think poor ole Thad suffers the same as any of us do when learning a new language: it's clear in your head what you want to say but it just won't come out right. KW I can't explain other than he may be all tech geek and knows nothing about teaching. He might be the best at doing it and one of the poorest at educating others. Seen that with many very savvy oil patch hands.

"... at the bottom of the production casing is a float shoe, 134 feet of cement in the shoe track, then a float collar ..."

How did BP manage to get 500 bbl cement down production casing when bottom 134 feet already plugged with cement?

Lots of interesting speculation, expressed with a fair amount of urgency.

Your suggestion?

Sounds like the RW bottom kill is still the ultimate answer. I have felt all along that John Wright's services would be the action that would drive the final nail in the coffin.

A minor point, but usually text inside quotes indicates a direct quote, but what Allen said the next day was ...

Admiral Allen: We actually released the pressure readings from the, after the cementing, the static kill yesterday. They were all within tolerance, and I don’t have them in front of me right now but we can, we can get them to you.

8/10 briefing.

As for getting pressure, see Rockman's post above, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6845#comment-700506

Can anyone tell me what Skandi ROV 1 is looking at? Is it the blow out preventer?

NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!

I just got comfortable with mushrooms being the the largest superorganisms.

There is also a fungus called Armillaria ostoyae, or the honey mushroom, that forms fungal mats as long as 8.9 km² (2200 square acres or 3.5 square miles), although there is disagreement as to whether the entire mat qualifies as a single organism. The largest example of this fungus can be found in a national forest in Oregon. It is estimated to be 2,400 years old.

Thanks. Fascinating stuff indeed.

Yes thanks OP. That was indeed a very interesting article. Lots to think about.

I was saying from day one on WKRG's website to watch for Acorn to bus claimants in from all over.

I have a hard time believing that because from the very start we heard stories how BP wanted all the documentation from the Fisherman, they were having to present income receipts for up to a year to be compensated and then the checks were still not coming in.

Poor BP. How many thousands of square miles are still closed to fishing?

Sounds like you are still short BP stocks ...

Looks like they slipped one under TFHG!!! Hangin' in Hooters a little too much, me thinks.( Either that or out chasin' beachmummsie's girlfiend )

They always do it at night dont you know, especialy on all this public and private property with all the hired hands who never speak a word, excepting a few that want their 15 munites of glory. Never seen where private contrators could not allow access to to an area such as this.
I have been a contrator and in no way would I have the power to allow ingress and egress from this.

When people report someone as "admitting" something, they are already implying some deception, which suggests some bias in the reporter's perspective. I believe Rockman addressed this issue earlier.

I don't believe that that is an accurate statement. Daily Hurricane: "At the seafloor, the well should have no more than 2,200 psi on it, and conceivable less, if the hydrostatic of the mud in the closed well had overcome reservoir pressure." (http://dailyhurricane.com/2010/08/adm-allen-confused---so-now-is-everybo...)

Missy Lynn, I chased that statement down. Maryann Tobin of "The Political Spin Examiner" has been scaremongering, twisting and flat out lying the entire length of this catastrophe. There's been way too much of it from her to believe that she simply erred.

Missy -- Perhaps the problem is that folks don’t understand how we use “static”. It just means the well isn’t flowing. A well can be shut in, or static, and still have 15,000 psi on it. Likewise when we say a well is “killed” that doesn’t mean there’s no pressure and it won’t flow. It just means there is a sufficient mud weight in the csg to keep it from flowing. The only place in the system of the BP well where pressure would be zero is at the surface on the drill rig. At the base of the riser it would be around 3,200 psi and more if they have the mud pumps running. That might explain the 4,200 psi number he's using. Either that or their mud weight is higher than the one I'm using for the calulation. At the base of the csg the pressure would be around 12,000 psi. But with the kill pill in the csg being slightly greater than 12,000 psi the well won’t flow. That’s a static well by definition.

If the csg were completely filled with cmt and there was no way for the reservoir to ever flow up the well again, the pressure at the cap would still be around 3,200 psi from the weight of the mud in the riser. And if they disconnected the riser the pressure at the cap would still be around 2,300 psi from the weight of the water column.

Amphipoda again? BP live feed from Ocean Intervention III ROV 2

Nice compression artifacts. Again. Shadows and lens flares are not oil. But I'm sure you'll reject that because of who's saying it, and use it to bolster your delusions.

What would be the result if they removed the mudlines from the BOP entirely and allow the 2250 psia external pressure to be the only pressure on the well? Is this well going to flow or not?

A rhetorical question?

Bedtime for this bonzo.

Seems to me, a non-oil field person, that they have pretty well established that they have good cement blocking the path from the reservoir thru the production casing.

But there is a second possible path - from the reservoir up thru the annulus. I believe that they have established that there is no wide-open path, that would have shown up in the pressure vs. volume data as the casing was being filled with mud in the initial stage of static top kill.

But the condition of the original annulus cement above the reservoir is not yet knowable, and it was part of the same job that obviously failed between the reservoir and inside of the casing, and is therefore not to be trusted.

There is also uncertainity about how much pressure the casing hangar can withstand in preventing flow from the annulus into the BOP should the annulus cement be faulty.

Thus it seems to me prudent to keep pressure in the BOP at this time just to make sure the annulus won't flow. Once the relief well enters the annulus, then the annulus cement and hangar seal can be further evaluated. It could very well be that both have been fine all along, that the annulus has no oil/gas in it at all and is still full of the mud that was pushed up it ahead of the original cement job.

Everybody seems to accept that when the relief well intercepts, there's going to be a bunch of mud and cement pumped into the annulus. But what if the seals ARE good, what if there's no outlet for the fluids that are already there? Do they up the pressure until the casing hangar yields?

Or do they, at that point, decide it's safe to swap out the BOP and reenter the well to finish the plug and abandon process?

Frank

So, on balance, if you subscribe to the notion transition to renewables will require a running-down of extractors, in an orderly and methodical manner over several dozen years, then US non-renewable energy exports should equal near 0. This will disturb other related markets and in the short term may force some refiners to close or move. In other words, self-sufficiency should not be limited to only renewables.

By the by here's what "PADD 2" means...

PADD: Petroleum Administration for Defense Districts

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100813/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill;_ylt=A...

To Which Matt Simmons would say: "I told ya'll last month that the relief wells were an absolute sham and just a diversion"

To Which the other conspiracy theorists would say: "So, from the start, they knew the relief wells would most likely not work cause they knew most likely that the casing's blown out and knew that the static kill made little sense but that it would be an oopsey-now we REALLY can't do the bottom kill...but we've got some sea-floor leaks and other concerns - HEY, we've got two relief-wells ready to go, so why don't we back-up, sidetrack and start producing from them cause the leaking should be alleviated by the producing wells...blah blah blah - This is the best it can be"

Or somethin like that the CTs are saying.

I mean, if producing from the well is an answer, what's the big deal?

What's involved in getting production rigs on site and in action?