BP now pulling out 3,500 feet of drill pipe lodged in the 5,000 foot cement plug holding back oil

BP says it's the "most prudent way to go."

BP's Senior Vice President Kent Wells Technical briefing, August 19, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. EDT:

Jaquetta White:
Jaquetta White from The Times-Picayune. I was hoping you could explain a little bit more why you need to remove the drill pipe; how it would impede the progress in moving the capping stack and the legacy BOP and putting the new one on.

Kent Wells:
Yes. Another good question. So, we could have up to, I think it's around 3,500 feet of drill pipe hanging below the BOP. And, if we were to -- and we believe that the drill pipe's being held by the BOP. So, if we were to try to pick up the BOP right now, we'd have to lift it 3,500 feet straight up to pull all of the drill pipe out, and then we'd have difficulty handling that, et cetera.
So, we think it's more prudent for us to go in and try to what we call fish it, actually pull the drill pipe out first and recover all of it, and then go and then take off the capping stack and then recover the BOP. So, I think that's the procedure that we believe is the most prudent way to go about it, at this point in time.


Press Briefing by National Incident Commander Thad Allen, August 19, 2010 at 12:00 p.m. EDT:

Transcript Excerpts "5,000 feet of cement... was put in during the top kill." "There's about 5,000 feet of cement there." "Well there's some that would tell you that the lack of communication between the annulus and the reservoir might not be cement, it could be just a collapse of the formation around it."