All the reports thus far say the relief well will be able to plug the well "in August". That was from the "90 days" number given early on - meaning early August (if they started drilling in early May). BP seemed to be hedging on that date recently - saying "by the end of August" IIRC.

Your Salon piece closes with: "A recent blow-out off the coast of Australia required five pressure relief wells to successfully shut it down."

I also recall the Ixtoc I. I recently read that the company down there (also a Transocean job?) tried all the same things that are being tried on the Deepwater Horizon well and only a relief well worked. It took 290 days (9+ months). And it was only in 160 feet of water (rather than 5000+), so they didn't have to worry about methane clathrates and the other joys of working with deep oil and gas mixtures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I

Why should we be confident that the blowout will be plugged in August? Even if they don't have to shut operations down due to tropical storms (which seems unlikely)?

:-(

BP and the Feds should be assuming and planning for the worst. Supposedly the US is, but there doesn't seem to be the kind of public massive mobilization that one might expect. I'm not advocating PR for the sake of PR, but genuine efforts to do all that we can.

The ROV seems to be messing with the containment box (?) this morning. Maybe we'll be lucky and that will work reasonably well...

http://www.bp.com/li...l/rov_stream.html

:-(

Cheers,
Scott.