Mutting Mud News Today

Once they have the mud in and if the injectivity test works, they get the mud in and control the pressure, they will, for all intents and purposes, have the pressure and the well under control and it will basically be in the same condition as any well were drilling anywhere in the world right now that has not had a blowout. >> then of course, the final question is, when it comes to permanently sealing that well, you want to do it with cement and do you do it from the top, inject the cement from ...

Higher pressures or could pumping that extra mud in actually damage the well bore and create an even worse situation than we have now? >> what theyre doing is theyre going to be pumping that mud in very slowly so that they dont raise the pressure too much. of course, it has to be higher pressure than the 6,900 psi but not much more so thats not a serious problem. the issue theyre trying to figure out is if they pump additional fluid in there, will the fluid and pressure be transmitted down to th...

Looking at fixing that hydraulic valve on the equipment they have down there below. once they fix that, they will go along with the test and that test that they are doing is going to tell them the big question. if we put the mud in there, is the mud going to sink down like we think it is going to? they couldnt get it to do that with the top kill they tried a couple of months ago but right now, they are thinking that closed system with the cap on it they will have a great deal more success with t...

The formation cannot receive an infinite amount of mud and cement and it is critical that they get that cement down near the base and around the formation and seal the pressure at the source and not at the top. consequently, it seems like it would be much easier for really to do the see meant from the top and they could actually vent either into their ship or a little bit into the sea some of that mud as the cement comes in from the bottom. >> don, question that i have here -- once they get this...

His students demonstrated the procedure for cnn earlier. look at this. >> as can you see, the well is flowing from the top. when the well is flowing, you cant do a static kill because as soon as you inject mud it is blown out into the ocean. to have the static kill you must have the apparatus at the top to control flowing. the brown there simulates mud. the blue area simulates the ocean. this is the primary well, and this is a capping stack which for a series of hours will control flow. this is ...

Understand. the more complicated as expect is that you have to push that mud and oil down into the formation and that will seal the formation so the injectivity part of it is to see that if when they put fluids into that closed systems, the pipe that they have now, the well thats sealed right now, when they put knew fluid in there will it push or inject fluid down into the reservoir and maintain the same pressures. >> when we saw that louisiana state university demonstration there, there was wat...

Part. they were supposed to begin this injectivity test as it is called yesterday. what went wrong? >> reporter: well, what went wrong is essentially they discovered a small leak in the hydraulic system in the cap on that ruptured well. thats a pretty darn important cap because it is keeping all of the oil from spewing into the gulf of mexico. were waiting to find out whether or not this is static kill day or ground hog day as you mentioned, it is another day of waiting to see if this static kil...