More than 40 feet of storm debris has been discovered inside a relief well that's been drilled close to the blown-out well, positioned to connect to its pipes and cut off its oil flow deep under the sea floor. The sediment needs to be cleaned out – which will take a day or two longer – before the relief well's casing can be installed and then sealed off with cement.
"It's taking some time to clean that out," BP spokesman Steve Rinehart told The Wall Street Journal.
"This is something I would describe as often happening when you've been out of the hole for a period of time," BP senior vice president Kent Wells told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. "It's not uncommon that when we go back into the hole we'll find fill," he said, referring to the storm sediment.
The unexpected, underwater mess left over from Bonnie means the official timeline for plugging the damaged well will be pushed back 24 to 36 hours, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration's oil spill point person, told reporters in Florida on Friday.
Allen also told anxious residents there that there's little chance that the Gulf's giant oil slick will reach southern Florida or the Florida Keys. The shores of four U.S. States, including northern Florida and the panhandle, have been slathered with oil since an April 20 explosion killed 11 rig workers and triggered America's worst ever oil spill. But because of prevailing water movements, the so-called Loop Current, oil has been carried northwest toward Texas rather than Florida.
"The chances that oil will become entrained in the Loop Current are very, very low and will go to zero as we continue to control the leakage at the well with the cap and ultimately kill it,'' Allen said, according to the Miami Herald.
Engineers discovered storm debris in the relief well after removing a protective plug put in place when engineers had to halt drilling and abandon the well temporarily as Bonnie passed over it. On Wednesday, they began flushing out the well's pipes, a process that'll take longer because of the debris. Then they'll prepare to pump heavy drilling mud into the well, before sealing it with cement.
Once that's done, crews plan to attempt a "static kill," which involves pumping more mud into a 150,000-pound containment cap atop the well, and then sealing it too with cement. It's similar to a tactic that failed back in May, the so-called "top kill," which BP tried to pull off while thousands of gallons of crude were still spewing out of the damaged well shaft. But now that the flow is greatly reduced, with only a few small leaks coming from the cap, engineers believe the tactic has a better chance of success.
The "static kill" was scheduled to begin late Sunday or early Monday, but now it'll be pushed back at least a day, likely until Tuesday, Allen said. His comments were carried by several news agencies.
Then comes the "bottom kill," which would permanently plug the oil well for good. That process, which involves pumping the same kind of heavy mud into the well from deep underground via the relief well, and then sealing that side with more cement, could take days or weeks. How long it takes depends on how successful the "static kill" is first.
Only then will America's worst-ever oil spill be held at its current size. According to the government's worst-case estimate, about 2.5 million gallons of oil have been spewing out into the Gulf of Mexico each day since the April 20 explosion. The oil slick has visibly spread over 2,700 miles of the gulf's surface, and nearly 30,000 workers have been involved in the response.
Despite recent reports that much of the oil once floating atop the Gulf's surface is sinking or disappearing, Gulf residents have said they're spotting more oil than ever before.
"There was more oil at South Pass Tuesday than I've seen since this whole thing started; it was really discouraging," charter boat captain Mike Frenette told The Times-Picayune. "I don't know where everyone else is looking, but if they think there's no more oil out there, they should take a ride with me."
Frenette and others whose livelihoods depend on clean gulf waters might have been angered by comments Friday by BP's incoming CEO, Bob Dudley, who says it's already time to begin scaling back parts of the oil cleanup.
"Where there is no oil on the beaches you probably don't need people walking up and down in hazmat suits. So you'll probably see that kind of a pullback," Dudley said, according to BBC News. But he was careful to promise residents that the British oil company will be assisting the oil cleanup for the long-term. "We'll be here for years," Dudley said, according to CNN.
Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives has approved a bill to boost safety standards for offshore drilling and remove a liability cap for oil spills, The Associated Press reported. But a partisan fight looms in the Senate before the new laws can go into affect.
BP has also created a new fund of its own, announcing on its website that it's creating a new $100 million charitable fund to support out-of-work oil rig workers who are experiencing hardship because of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.