Oil Spill Static Kill Attempt LIVE Streaming (VIDEO)

The oil spill 'static kill' attempt is officially underway, as BP seeks to plug the oil spill with mud and cement to stop flow once and for all.

PBS NewsHour tweeted that the static kill attempt began officially today around 4 p.m. EST. BP says the process will take between 33-61 hours if all goes as planned.

BP has said the static kill is a chance to stop the oil spill leak without relief wells, which it previously insisted were necessary.

Either way, BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said relief wells would be installed at some point to ensure "the well is dead."

AOL News reports that this is potentially "one of the final steps to permanently stopping the flow of oil."

WATCH live video footage of the oil spill static kill attempt below:

Free TV : Ustream

Comments

[racetoinfinity]

08:45 PM on 08/03/2010

An industry expert on "Countdown" just wondered why they've stopped the relief well that's four feet away from the pipe, and said that doing the kill from the top is not what he would consider the best or safest practice to kill the well, as it could hide seeps and cracks below, which the relief well wouldn't hide - he wonders what's up?

[MoreDimensions]

09:53 PM on 08/03/2010

The plan is to finish the relief wells after this procedure. and encase around the pipe.

[ilovecandy]

08:36 PM on 08/03/2010

I hope it works, but they still need to do the relief wells.

[GomezAddams]

07:38 PM on 08/03/2010

BP please get something right this time. You should have been working to kill the well in the first place instead of taking potshots to make it look like your were doing something.

If this does fail, please, please, please do not lie to us anymore. The truth is always the best path to take.

[bigbubba90210]

09:20 PM on 08/03/2010

That would have been like pleading with Jeffrey Dahmer not to eat you.

[Dan1902]

07:23 PM on 08/03/2010

Is this procedure named after the BP payout system!!!

[cutandrun]

06:48 PM on 08/03/2010

So we have a live execution on HP today........... Its kind of a ready-fire-aim bunch isnt it?

[ElectricFuture]

06:13 PM on 08/03/2010

SAFETY FLUID WAS REMOVED BEFORE OIL RIG EXPLODED IN GULF

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/safety_fluid_was_removed_befor.html

BEFORE RIG EXPLOSION, BP PUMPED "UNUSUAL" CHEMICAL MIXTURE INTO WELL, CONTRACTOR SAYS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/20/AR2010072002038.html

DEEPWATER HORIZON ALARM SYSTEM WAS PARTLY DISABLED PRIOR TO EXPLOSION, TECHNICIAN TELLS CONGRESS

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/23/deepwater-horizon-alarm-s_n_657143.html

Do these actions sound like mere negligence and cost-cutting... or do they sound like sabotage?

Maybe that's why one of the Deepwater Horizon engineers is reported as saying,

"THE RIG'S ON FIRE! TOLD YOU THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN"

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/06/rigs-fire-i-told-you-was-gonna-happen

[sven1olaf]

06:41 PM on 08/03/2010

plz do not try to give any credence to the ridiculous notion that this was any sort of sabotage.

Occams Razor points clearly at cost cutting negligence.

the simplest explanation is more often than not the most accurate explanation.

[GeorgeMilquetoast]

06:44 PM on 08/03/2010

I'm in agreement with you on this one, Sven. However, I prefer to label the root cause as Management Malpractice. :-) Profit above all else, including employee and environmental safety.

[ElectricFuture]

08:52 PM on 08/03/2010

How does removing safety fluid cut costs?
How does pumping unusual chemicals into the well cut costs?
How does disabling the alarm system cut costs?

These actions are NOT cost-cutting measures, so please don't use some irrelevant threory like Occam's razor to sweep them under the rug.

Ignoring the disturbing facts allows corporate criminals to get away with almost anything.

[bigbubba90210]

09:36 PM on 08/03/2010

Looks like we have ourselves a "Gulfer."

[BillLoney]

06:09 PM on 08/03/2010

I don't know why they're even risking this. The relief wells are practically finished, and they're a much better solution. If this ends up knocking holes in the ocean floor, won't that be just grand?

[racetoinfinity]

08:47 PM on 08/03/2010

Precisely? Why?

[racetoinfinity]

08:50 PM on 08/03/2010

Corrrection: "Precisely PERIOD."

[AbstractImp]

05:48 PM on 08/03/2010

I could deal with a static BP.

[MichaelMcKLA]

05:46 PM on 08/03/2010

PoHuff should be faster on the draw. I was watching this on CNN for like a couple hours before it showed up here. Meanwhile, over on Fox News, they are preparing to blame any problems on Obama, and if a black person is somehow involved, to confuse him with some other black person. (Forgive my sarcasm, but FN deserves it.)

Good luck, BP.

[Mark Bailey]

07:01 PM on 08/03/2010

I wonder how many people "spying" on Fox News contribute to their ratings bonanza? Just wondering...

[MichaelMcKLA]

07:20 PM on 08/03/2010

No idea. I don't look at it except as a very last resort. Fortunately that is a rare occurrence.

[jujub]

05:40 PM on 08/03/2010

Just think...$4,200 penalty per barrel would pay off our deficit! Thanks BP!

[didItellya]

05:41 PM on 08/03/2010

Think again. The level of accountability is going to be difficult. Obama's administration did not mandate any leak-free metering once the new cap/valve was installed. What's left? Estimates. Estimates aren't worth spit in a court of law. Further, BP was aided and abetted in fudging the amount of quantifiable oil by the widespread use of correxit. OIL, what oil? Yes, Your Honor, we recovered about 2% of these wild government "estimates".

[bilo rile me]

06:10 PM on 08/03/2010

Courts tend to pay attention to scientists, and their testimony, when called as expert witness.

[Telemachus]

05:49 PM on 08/03/2010

Not quite, but it would help. Latest estimate is 205 million gallons. Divide by 42 gal/bbl and that's about 5 million barrels, times $4,000 would be $20 billion in fines.

Rough numbers there, but definitely worth pursuing.

The tragedy is that the real damage is FAR beyond that. Two to three times that amount at least, not counting the irreplaceable losses like extinction of species, of which there will probably be some, and the lifestyles and traditions of people who have lived there for generations.

[didItellya]

05:55 PM on 08/03/2010

Yeah, but how is that going to be proved?

[FGGreene]

06:01 PM on 08/03/2010

It's a civil fine,so civil law burden of proof would be required: "a preponderance of evidence." Basically the best scientific best estimate would or consensus would prevail. The current 4.9 million barrel estimate should be pretty solid.

[DevRock]

05:39 PM on 08/03/2010

This video is so intriguing.... not!

[Weathermaker]

05:36 PM on 08/03/2010

If I'm not mistaken, according to federal regulations inserting cement at the bottom through relief wells is REQUIRED. I'm afraid our journalists are wrong again.

[Number 6]

05:36 PM on 08/03/2010

I heard an amazing statistic on NPR this morning. The amount of oil that's leaked in the gulf, almost 5 million gallons, is consumed by the United States every 5 hours.

[Weathermaker]

05:39 PM on 08/03/2010

Consumed and pumped in the atmosphere for the most part.

[MyResponsibility]

09:01 AM on 08/04/2010

There's oil in the atmosphere? Of course you mean hydrocarbons, I'm sure. And even with that figure, CO2 is still only 0.039% of the atmosphere. The trees and plants show their appreciation for that CO2 by giving us Oxygen. The oceans absorb what the atmosphere is unable to hold. What a wonderful cycle it is. Yup, I'm a Anthropogenic Climate Change denier.

[deluk]

05:41 PM on 08/03/2010

Wjich is then expelled to pollute the global atmosphere and create greenhouse gases.

[Telemachus]

05:50 PM on 08/03/2010

Thank goodness THAT's just a myth!

/sarcasm off/

[treadway123]

05:31 PM on 08/03/2010

It's done already guys. Lets go on to makeing sure they are held accountable for the mess, however long it takes to clean it up! apparently the dispersent is not as toxic as they thought an NO dead fish are washing up on shore by the thousands as they first thought. So that is a plus, an more study needs to be done on it.

[didItellya]

05:41 PM on 08/03/2010

The level of accountability is going to be difficult. Obama's administration did not mandate any leak-free metering once the new cap/valve was installed. What's left? Estimates. Estimates aren't worth spit in a court of law. Further, BP was aided and abetted in fudging the amount of quantifiable oil by the widespread use of correxit. OIL, what oil? Yes, Your Honor, we recovered about 2% of these wild government "estimates".

[Earl Davis]

05:24 PM on 08/03/2010

More B.S from BP. And besides, they already tried this... anyone remember Top Kill, followed by Junk Shot, which was preceded by Top Hat? They are attempting things they know will fail in order to look like they are doing something and to appease us. This thing will keep leaking until they finish the relief wells.

[GeorgeMilquetoast]

05:32 PM on 08/03/2010

Can you tell us why the Top Kill failed? Hint: Severely leaky ruptured riser. That's what allowed all the high-density drilling mud to escape and disallowed enough pressure at the top of the well to force the mud down into the well.

What's different this time? Hint: No longer any severe leaks. Hopefully.

Still, I'm concerned that BP is taking this route instead of performing the bottom k.i.l.l first.

[MyResponsibility]

09:08 AM on 08/04/2010

Nothing quite looks like trying to cure the problem better than actually curing the problem. Your assertion is ridiculous. Can you tell me what the weight of the pressure is at 5000 feet below the surface? Once you discover that value, perhaps you will understand that we are able to more in outer space than we can do 1 mile under water. The limitations at such extremities are almost insurmountable. That they were able to do what they've done is amazing. It fall short of your crazy expectations, but the laws of physics at times are hard to overcome. This is uncharted territory.

[Earl Davis]

06:16 PM on 08/04/2010

“Nothing quite looks like trying to cure the problem better than actually curing the problem."

Ever heard of Corexit? Stop being naive. So to think that BP would be above spin control and PR stunts to help their image is quite ridiculous. And if you recall the Ixtapa well back in the 70's, they tried all of the things BP is trying now and failed. And that was in a much, much shallower depth. And the only thing that fixed Ixtapa was the relief well. And that will ultimately be the only thing that fixes this.