NEW ORLEANS (Associated Press) - The image of thick crude gushing from a blown-out oil well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico was turned off when a tightly fitting cap was secured on top a month-and-a-half ago.
Engineers weren't expecting that sight again Thursday when they planned to delicately remove the cap as a prelude to raising the massive piece of equipment underneath that failed to prevent the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
But the government wasn't offering a guarantee no more oil would leak. Plans were being made for oil collection vessels to be on standby in case of a problem.
With the cap and failed blowout preventer removed temporarily until another blowout preventer can be installed, a lot will be riding on the stability of a plug that was created when mud and cement were pumped down into the well from the top. Essentially, the pressure exerted downward served to counter the pressure coming up.
But Rice University engineering professor George Hirasaki said there is still uncertainty about whether the cement settled everywhere it needed to in order to keep oil and gas from finding its way up.
"Just because it didn't flow when they tested it doesn't mean the cement displaced all of the oil and gas," Hirasaki said.
That's why many people have felt that finishing a relief well and pumping mud and cement in through the bottom would be the ultimate solution to the crisis, said Hirasaki, who was involved in the oil containment effort in the Bay Marchand field off Louisiana after a rig burned in the early 1970s.
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