BP To Share Well Containment Technology

by Miles Wolf Tamboli - The Talk Radio News Service

In a press release issued by British gas giant BP Monday, the corporation announced its plans to share information and equipment used in the containment of the Macondo deepwater well with the Marine Well Containment Company, or MWCC, so that it may be shared with all oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico. 

“We are pleased to announce our plans to join the Marine Well Containment Company and provide the experience and specialized equipment needed to respond to a deepwater well control incident,” said Richard Morrison, BP vice president for Gulf of Mexico operations. “We believe the addition of our recently gained deepwater intervention experience and specialized equipment will be important to the marine well containment system.”

Having just successfully plugged the mile-deep well responsible for leaking almost 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf over the summer, BP has developed a number of new technologies that may aid in containing deepwater wells in the future.

The oil industry and it’s federal regulators - the now-dissolved Minerals Management Service in particular - have become the subject of scrutiny recently, as many in the media have questioned the industry’s ability to safely drill at depths currently being explored.

ExxonMobil, the operators of the MWCC, plan to improve on BP’s newly developed technologies to make deepwater drilling safer, according to the report.