diameter. they re very cautious. that s the reason we re not coming off the mid-august prediction. it s going to be very methodical. in relation to why this wasn t done earlier, i m assuming you re talking about the capping stack it had to be designed, tested and brauought to site an as you see, there are, obviously, some leaks we re having to fix and things like that. a range of capping devices that have been developed probably over ten, or all developed under different scenarios and we can actually remove it and put a flange on it and built a model of this on land and tested it before they brought it out here. these were all directed a long time ago. we told them that we were not happy with the redundancy in the machinery and the capacity and we told them you need to give us a plan on how you ll get redundancy. if a piece of equipmentbreaks, you cannot only produce, but produce in capacity and cover a
metphorically put your thumb over the garden hose. in this case it is called a capping stack. three ways for the oil to leave that capping stack and then very slowly close that third choke line down and then do pressure readings. if we have very low pressure readings, it would be the equivalent of putting your thumb over the garden hose and the water is going some place else. if we get high pressure readings that is indication that the wellbore is in tact and that all then relates to how much mud and the procedures that would be needed and how to kill the well down below. is that more descriptive. admiral, two questions. has the relief well drilling entirely stopped and how farรง away is it from the actual line and, secondly, there seems to be recurring questions as to was this solution or why wasn t this solution considered earlier in the process? first of all, i would say
all the details. this is a very significant test in the evolution of this response and our ability to increase our containment, our redundancy and capacity. i l ll talk about that in a lite bit. we consulted extensively with outside experts. our science team led by secretary of energy chu consulted also with other members of industry regarding potential issues we should deal with. i will zero right in on what the discussion was mainly about and be happy to answer some questions about it. we have never been sure that we have known the condition of the well bore and the casing pipe since the event occurred. as we ve gotten closer to having the potential to close in and do pressure readings on the capping stack, we have had numerous discussions about what the current status is of the well bore and the casings and the implications if they had been damaged or if there was any communication outside the well
the kill line to the helix producer and choke line to the q 4000. okay? last week as you remember we removed the stub of the riser pipe and we put in what we called a flange spool. on top of that what will happen, which was significant, is we ve now seeded the capping stack here and basically it has three rams, a mini blowout preventer, also has a kill line and a choke line. okay? so you basically have a small bop on top of the larger bop that is legacy to the deepwater horizon. here is how we intend to do the well integrity test. we will slowly take down production from the q 4000 and the helix producer later on today to the point where they are not producing anymore. that will force the oil up through the ploeout preventer into the capping stack. at that point the kill line, the choke line, and the top of the stack will be open. there will be product releasing from there. that s the reason we know we have the skimmers and additional
floating production unit has been employed in the gulf coast. it was a pretty significant event. we had a chance to talk to the crew and get a brief on operations and that was very helpful moving forward. out on site today in and around the well site we had 44 skimmers, 20 of them actually within 15 nautical miles of the source. there continues to be a robust response to the oil being released while we are looking at the new stacking cap and the shift and i d like to brief you on that. as i briefed my president yesterday in houston we had intended to proceed yesterday with the well integrity test related to the new capping stack that was put on the well site. after we were able to remove the piece of riser pipe that had been there for many days. we had a meeting yesterday and went from about 11:00 in the morning to almost 3:00 in houston. we wanted to make sure we were getting this right, attending to