Tag: Evening Edition

But years of legal wrangles and probes lie ahead even after the well is killed, and myriad questions remain about the long-term effects of the massive oil spill on wildlife, the environment and the livelihoods of Gulf residents.

BP aims to start the “static kill” on Sunday or Monday, pumping heavy drilling mud and cement down through the cap at the top of the well that has sealed it for the past two weeks.

Hayward, whose PR gaffes made him a target of US fury, will be succeeded by Bob Dudley, who is in charge of BP’s Gulf clean-up operations and who has vowed to “change the culture” of how the company tackles safety issues.

BP on Tuesday said it had made a record 16.9-billion-dollar loss in the second quarter, and will sell 30 billion dollars of assets over the next 18 months as it seeks to return to profitability.

The size of any such payoff, which must be agreed by a BP board meeting in London on Monday, risks sparking a fresh row as the British-based firm battles to rebuild its reputation after the worst environmental disaster in US history.

BP insists no final decision has yet been made on the future of Hayward, whose string of public relations gaffes during the crisis included telling reporters “I want my life back” and joining a yacht race.

The BBC said Hayward was negotiating his exit and an announcement was likely by Monday when the BP board meets ahead of second quarter results expected to reveal a 30-billion-dollar provision for paying for the disaster.

In the Gulf, US oil spill chief Thad Allen said BP’s long-awaited operation to permanently plug the leaking Gulf of Mexico well had been delayed and will now probably begin the week after next.

The US official overseeing the spill response said a first chance to seal the well for good could come in the next three to five days, as response crews quickly scaled operations back up.

Development Driller 3 (DD3), charged with drilling a relief well that will aid efforts to plug the leak, was expected back at the site shortly and would begin reattaching to the well site immediately, Admiral Thad Allen said.

Admiral Thad Allen, the US official overseeing the spill response, said that crews aboard two drilling rigs and a container ship were drawing up thousands of feet of pipes from beneath the sea, while non-essential personnel were being evacuated as Tropical Storm Bonnie took aim at the area.

Officials said a cap that has kept oil from escaping the well since last Thursday would stay in place, after a week of tests suggested pressure would not force oil out through new leaks.

A full-scale evacuation could delay by up to two weeks the final operation to plug BP’s runaway well, which has unleashed millions of barrels of crude on Gulf Coast shorelines in one of America’s worst ever environmental disasters.

“Activities that are under way for storm preparedness include evacuating specialized vessels from the path of any severe weather to prevent damage and ensure that oil recovery operations can resume as soon as possible after a storm,” a Coast Guard statement said.

US and BP officials were poring over weather data as the National Hurricane Center downgraded an earlier forecast saying there was now a 50 percent chance of the bad weather “becoming a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours.”

Depending on how the system develops, officials may have to issue evacuation orders for hundreds of support ships and engineers trying to complete a relief well being drilled deep under the seabed.

The US government allowed the British energy giant to keep in place a cap stemming the flow from the ruptured wellhead for another 24 hours, as engineers floated a new plan to kill the well.

BP said the aim would be to send down heavy drilling mud through the blowout preventer valve system that sits on top of the well and then inject cement into the wellhead to seal it.