A 'junk shot' top kill holds for now in Gulf blowout

Washington Post:

More than 12 hours after suspending the effort, BP late Friday afternoon resumed its attempt to plug the leak spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and federal officials said there was "some evidence" one of the procedures had been effective.

As President Obama visited Louisiana to assess the growing environmental disaster, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the company had resumed pumping heavy mud into a blown-out, gushing oil well about a mile below the surface in a technique known as "top kill." The operation had been halted at about 2:30 a.m. and could not resume until more mud was delivered.

Chu said that officials were increasingly confident that the "bridging materials" they had inserted into the pipe -- the effort known as the "junk shot" -- could provide additional resistance to the oil coming out of the riser.

"There's some evidence that some of the junk took," he said in a phone interview from BP's Houston headquarters. "We were wanting to build up as much resistance as we could."

...


Note that Chu is in Houston in the BP war room of petroleum engineers working to stop the blowout. He maybe a real smart guy about somethings, but when it comes to shutting down a blowout, he is an observer much as I would be if I were in the room. Credit for the success of this effort should go to the engineers and the workers on be boats in the Gulf.

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