By Kristen Hays
HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP <:BP.LO:>Plc is getting close to a critical step to create hurricane-ready oil-capture systems at the gushing leak in the Gulf of Mexico in the next seven to 10 days, the top U.S. official overseeing the response said on Monday.
That step will involve removing a containment cap now atop failed blowout preventer equipment at the seabed to replace it with a larger cap and seal designed to contain more oil, according to BP's most recent plan submitted to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The new cap also will be designed to allow vessels at the surface to disconnect and move if a storm approaches, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen told reporters at a briefing.
In addition, the new cap will be equipped with a sensor to get a more precise reading of the leak's flow rate, he said.
"They will put a sensor on it," he said.
A team of U.S. scientists' latest estimate is that the blown-out well is leaking 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day, a figure the team is trying to refine, Allen said.
"I don't think we're going to know the flow rate until we can completely contain the flow," Allen said.
The cap switch is slated to come at the end of June, when BP expects to have started up a third vessel to increase current oil-handling capacity of 28,000 barrels a day to up to 53,000 barrels a day.
INCREASING CAPACITY
Allen and BP have repeatedly said that the leak will gush unchecked during the switch.
The cap change is part of BP's plan to further increase oil-handling capacity to up to 80,000 barrels a day on four vessels by mid-July.
Even if the 53,000 barrels-per-day capacity is sufficient, the two vessels now operating cannot disconnect quickly and move if a hurricane approaches. The new cap will provide that capability, Allen said.
But when pressed, Allen wouldn't say for certain that the cap switch would take place.
"I would say we have to switch the caps" so the systems planned for mid-July are prepared for hurricanes and have enough capacity to allow a vessel to step in if another has a problem.
"I think we should be zeroing in on this in the next seven to 10 days," he said of the decision to switch the caps.
Hurricane season began on June 1. BP expects a pair of relief wells being drilled to reach and plug the blown-out well by mid-August, but the oil-handling systems are vulnerable to storms in the meantime.
The current oil-capture systems with two vessels collected or burned off 23,290 barrels (978,180 gallons/3.7 million liters) of crude on Sunday, BP said earlier on Monday.
The British energy company is using two different systems to capture some of the oil spewing into the ocean from the deep-sea offshore well that ruptured on April 20.
Its containment cap system, installed on June 3, collected 14,570 barrels on Sunday, BP said. A second system, started up on June 16, burned off 8,720 barrels on Sunday, BP said. The systems have a total capacity of 28,000 barrels a day, according to BP.
An undetermined amount of crude continues to gush into the sea despite BP's two collection systems.
Overall, BP has collected 231,190 barrels of oil from the containment cap system that channels oil to Transocean Ltd's Discoverer Enterprise drillship a mile above at the water's surface, according to BP figures.
A drillship is a vessel equipped with a drilling rig that can stay in place for long periods of time while drilling, testing and completing offshore wells.
The second system siphons oil through a hose connected to a failed blowout preventer at the seabed to Helix Energy Solutions' Q4000 service rig. Unlike the drillship, that rig has no storage or processing capacity, so that collected oil must be burned off with a flare boom.
The Q4000 has burned off a total of 41,930 barrels of oil since it started up last week, according to BP figures.
The drillship's total processing capacity is 18,000 barrels a day, while the Q4000 can handle up to 10,000 barrels a day, BP said. The cap system hit a high of 16,020 barrels on June 17, and the Q4000's high slightly surpassed its capacity at 10,100 on June 18, BP said. (Reporting by Kristen Hays; Editing by Will Dunham and Cynthia Osterman)
