an underground blowout really is the most typical kind of blowout that you experience in the oil and gas business. there s really no way to control it since you have a low pressure zone and a high pressure zone communicating. the only way to get this actually killed is to get the relief well drilled and kill it at the source. charles hadlock was on earlier. he said they re getting closer and closer to getting that relief well in place. how many days, weeks do you think we re away from that? well, i was really hoping they would be ready to get the well killed next week. with this three-day delay shutting down for this integrity test, it s thrown them behind. and i ve been concerned about burning up good weather by doing this test. i think they re probably they ve got a set pipe, drill about another 30 feet and set pipe, and then test that pipe and then drill for the intercept. so it s probably going to be late next week before they re ready for the kill. bob, of course, we kee
in. all the american people should rest assured that all of these decisions will be based on the science and what s best for the people of the gulf. all right? let s get to our ed lavendera in new orleans. ed, what is the latest on those well integrity tests? reporter: hey, tony. well, so far everything that we re hearing seems to suggest that things are going well. we heard from bp officials this morning where they tell us that the initial hours, the first 14 hours or so, of the integrity test showed no negative effects on the ocean floor and that the pressure readings and gauges that they have been monitoring around the clock continue to go up steadily and smoothly. so that is the sign that they wanted to see. remember, we ve been talking about the pressure readings. what they wanted is nothing below 6,000 pounds per square inch and they really wanted to get up to about 8,000. the last number we had has is at about 6,700 and that number keeps climbing.
that wouldn t be a good sign, they probably would immediately shut that down, but that hasn t happened yet. that s why they re sounding so confident about the way things are moving forward. what happens after this integrity test is still very much up in the air and officials haven t exactly laid out a plan, at least publicly, about what they re going to do. one of the options that that will allen talked about, it leads us to believe this is what he think will happen in the coming days. they ll have to reopen the valves and begin the process of collecting the oil, that perhaps this cap a lone won t necessarily work itself, but think would reopen the valves and start collecting the oil. they say they have the capacity to collect all of them. wall street also cheered the news that the oil leak had been shut off temporarily. shares of bp rose 7% yesterday after the company made the
sustainability, how long can this containment cap sustain this situation. that is, being able to work keeping the flow of oil from continuing to flow into the gulf waters. we do know that scientists are monitoring those pressure gauges around the clock, that they have been huddling up in six-hour intervals to kind of compare notes and see how to move forward. the fact that we re still seeing these amazing pictures from the bottom of the gulf waters is a good sign, because they had been telling us that if things had gone wrong or if the pressures started dropping, they could essentially end this integrity test at any point. so the fact that they re still doing this is a good sign. it is supposed to last up to 48 hours. then the question becomes, what next? there is a couple of different options. there is the possibility that the containment cap continues to work the way it is by itself, but what admiral thad allen, as everyone knows, the man in charge of the federal response, he seemed
to try to get it up about 8,000. right now they say they re at 6,700 pounds per square inch and happy with that. saying that that pressure continues to rise at a steady rate. that is good news. and that is they didn t offer much of the detail s except to describe had some of the works the robotic cameras below the surface what they were doing. looking around on the ocean floor around that blowout preventer and haven t seen any damage to the ocean floor as well. so all good signs as to how we expected to proceed from here and what kind of decisions will be made still haven t been made. so the good news is, though, the integrity test continues and they re happy with the way it s moving along so far. ed lavandera joining us by phone from new orleans. thanks for the update. we ll check back. across the give, sense of relief tempered by a grim reality. the flow has stopped temporarily