AUG 12, 2010 - UPDATE - Another oil industry expert has taken up the baton from fallen Matt Simmons. Bob Cavnar has viewed the recent capping and static kill effort in the Gulf with a healthy dose of guarded suspicion. Cavnar believes the pressure from the well, which should have gone to zero, indicates that there is still subsurface leakage, and that the static kill procedure may have made these leaks worse, creating open communication between the reservoir and the sea. And in fact, these leaks are fairly obvious. There have been numerous video sequences of obvious oil and gas eruption from the sea floor, but now that the constant light of the media has dimmed, these get little attention. But Cavnar asks some nagging questions: “Why is the wellhead leaking? To be clear, dead means dead. If it’s leaking oil, that means it’s not dead... I’m sitting here watching oil leaking from a well that is supposedly dead. I’m listening to Admiral Allen saying the well is dead and to Jane Lubchenco and Carol Browner seriously contending that almost 4 million barrels of oil have disappeared. Is it just me, or are we watching the Matrix in real life?” Cavnar also commented on the pressure, reported at 4300psi: “The fact that they’re getting pressure now tells me that they are indeed communicated to the reservoir below, probably obscured by the fact that they now have mud strung through the annulus. If they are indeed communicated, pressure will build on the wellhead, which is exactly what’s happening.”
