the unknown quantity, which is the condition of the wellbore and the casings moving forward and now we are prepared to do that. reporter: so, wolf, as you mentioned, those relief wells will continue. what is interesting about this is that if one of the two versions of the containment cap works, essentially, that first relief well would reach the site by the end of july and take perhaps another two weeks to get everything killed off, so that we are looking if this does work at saving about a month s worth of extra oil spewing into the gulf of mexico. so that is why this is such a significant moment. and it is interesting, ed, that at 5:00 p.m. eastern and 4:00 p.m. central is when thad allen had the briefing saying they had given bp the go ahead to conduct this test that could last as long as 48 hours, and exactly one hour later, 5:00 p.m. central, and 6:00 p.m. eastern, that is when they sealed off part of the cap, and that is when we knew that the test had formally started?
and best mibnds working on this in the united states. i feel confident it won t be a thad allen decision but a whole government decision in the best interest of the country. reporter: allen describes the atmosphere inside the bp command center where hundreds of people have been working around the clock. when that cap got put into place and it was successful, what was the atmosphere like? cheers? the video room where all this takes place is very much like a war room except everybody is a little bit more informally dressed. it is called the hive. it is actually fairy quiet. a lot of people are talking, there is a lot of radio communications, they re linking with the operators actually on scene. reporter: allen says no one stood up and cheered but there was a huge sense of optimism and relief. we got a sense of the tension in that room called the hive where the remotely operated vehicles are controlled during a recent visit to bp s command center. roger that. roger that. rep
that failed bombing in new york s times square, and he offers a chilling explanation for what he calls the need for a holy war. we want to welcome our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer here in the i m wolf blitzer here in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com following breaking news, the government has given bp the okay to go forward with testing the integrity test. this comes a full day after we have all expected the test to begin, and a frustrating communication gap that kept the world in the dark for hours about what was going on. cnn s chad meyers is monitoring all of this for us. chad, you got the breaking news from the national incident commander, thad allen. update the viewers and tell us what we know right now, because this is a touch-and-go critical
impact on the gulf coast, to the people, to the culture, we all understand the difficult times we re going through and what we didn t want to do is compound that problem by making an irreversible mistake. retired admiral allen says after getting the new info from b.p., he gave the go ahead to get this thing started. jonathan sierry live in grand isle, louisiana tonight. explain how this works and what the concerns are. certainly, shep. what they re doing right now is slowly closing the valves on that new cap on the well and then measuring the oil pressure that builds up inside. high pressure lets them know they re containing the oil inside the well. a low pressure reading would indicate that there might be leaks in the well elsewhere. the concern was, the federal government wanted assurances from b.p. that by increasing the pressure in that cap, that they weren t going to create additional ruptures inside that well, shep? this must be quite a relief for folks down there or is it?
we ve had this conversation many times, the disenchantment about what they perceive as a lack of cured nation between the white house and bf, sometimes the as this operation unfolds, is there a sense that maybe finally there are people who have, a, a decent plan, and b, the right level of coordination? i think, you know, that admiral allen was instrumental in getting and the administration for getting the second relief well. you can t be too cautious about this. this is an environmental catastrophe. it was underestimated at first, and there will always be problems with organization, but it s already a catastrophe, probably the greatest in the world by the time we find out what happened here, but let s hope this thing work. a lot of these engineers and coast guard people have been