Man drilling relief well has perfect record

August 16, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS

The man with pinpoint accuracy who is drilling the relief well meant to plug BP’s runaway well is looking forward to finishing his mission and celebrating with a cigar, a dinner party with his crew and a trip somewhere quiet to unwind with his wife.

John Wright has never missed his target over the years, successfully drilling 40 relief wells that were used to plug leaks around the world. People along the Gulf Coast aren’t the only ones hoping he can make it 41-for-41.

“Anyone who has ever worked extremely hard on a long project wants to see it successfully finished, as long as it serves its intended purpose,” Wright, 56, who is leading the team drilling the primary relief well, said in a lengthy e-mail exchange with The Associated Press from the Development Driller III vessel.

BP began work on its primary relief well in early May to permanently seal the ruptured well. But about two weeks ago, around the time the company had done a successful static kill pumping mud and cement into the top of the well, executives began signaling that the bottom kill procedure might not be needed. Even the government’s point man on the spill response, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, suggested that was possible.

Allen put that uncertainty to rest Friday and Saturday, saying the relief well would be finished so the well could be killed. The bottom kill, in which mud and cement will plug the well from below the seafloor, won’t be started until at least next weekend.

Wright said he would not have been disappointed if the relief well were halted, recalling the time his high school football team won the city championship in Houston in 1970.

“I never made a touchdown or scored a point, but I was proud to be part of the team that won and that I had done my job,” said Wright, who has two daughters and three grandchildren.

The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and causing 206 million gallons of oil to spew from BP’s well a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

And with shrimp season opening along Louisiana’s coast today, uncertainties remain over prices, demand and whether oil from the disaster lurks beneath the water’s surface.

Wright said he was part of a team that started planning the relief well in May, working 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. He has been on the DDIII rig nearly nonstop since June 19.

Wright said the BP well was the biggest job of his career, but it’s only the latest in a long line of wells that began after he earned a graduate degree from Texas A&M University.

The work on the BP well has been an intense stop-and-go project, with Wright drilling only a short distance at a time so his team can then do tests to make sure he’s still on target. If not, the crew adjusts the drill’s trajectory before restarting.

To date, he and his team have drilled nearly 18,000 feet — more than three miles. The grapefruit-sized drill bit is about 50 feet from their target, which is less than half the size of a dart board. The unusual depth, the relative weakness of the rock and the high pressure in the well have made the task challenging.

Wright, who is not a BP employee but is working on a contract basis, is senior vice president of technology for Houston-based Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc. Boots & Coots bought Wright’s company in 2009, and Wright became vice president as part of the sale.