rig. it s a key piece of evidence that investigators will go over and take it apart to try to figure out exactly what happened. because if they find that there was any type of changes in the blowout preventer, if there was a lack of maintenance, that could be grounds for criminal negligence. now several fbi agents are out there at the site today watching this operation as if it were a crime scene in progress. they re waiting to see what is in this blowout preventer. this is one heavy thing. it is a million pounds, charles, to bring this up to the sur snas. yes. come on. how can you bring up a million pounds? you do it with a vessel called a q-4,000. they bring it up through the center. it is five stories tall. it weighs a million pounds. and they have to bring it up from over a mile deep down on the ocean floor. so it s going to take several more hours. they expect to have it out of the water sometime later today. then they will transport it
terms of moving that equipment out of the area. obviously the equipment is owned by different companies. so bp, transocean and others will all make individual decisions as companies about when they will move equipment. i think there s no doubt that this storm has intensified, and decisions will be made probably likely later this afternoon on moving some of that equipment out of that. for instance, the dd-3, which is the rig drilling the relief well that is closest to the active well right now. and the q-4000 is the boat burning the oil covered through the original cap. the decisions made at 8:00
and promptly extended the capping another day, which he did again today. he was asked why the surface collection cannot be done immediately and why bp is claiming that checking at the surface would first require several more days of oil flowing unchecked again into the gulf. if we were to hook up the q-4000 and the helix producer, that would produce a number of problems right away. number one, there would be extensive pressure in those lines over and above what they were used to handling when they were both in production. secondarily, there are issues about the make-up of the hydro carbon stream at that point and the issue of sand in the column and whether or not it would be forced up under that pressure once it was vented. the original long-term goal with the new stacking cap in place which we have right now was to actually have four production vessels, two coming off the lower keel wide and choke line from the legacy blowout preventer and two coming from the keel and the choke line
extended the capping yet another day, which he did again today. he was asked why the surface collection cannot be done immediately and why bp is claiming that collecting at the surface would first require several more days of oil flowing unchecked again into the gulf. if we were to hook up the q-4000 and the helix producer, that would produce a number of problems right away. number one, there would be extensive pressure in those lines over and above what they were used to handling when they were both in production. secondarily, there are some issues about the make-up of the hydrocarbon stream at that point and the issue of sand in the column and whether or not it would be forced up under that pressure once it was vented. the original long-term goal with the new stacking cap in place which we have right now was to actually have four production vessels, two coming off the lower keel wide and choke line from the legacy blowout preventer and two coming from the keel and the choke line of
on there, replace it, and now they re back on track to get this all-important pressure testing of this well going again. they ve got a lot of things they ve got to do now. they ve got to test the seal. they ve got to bring the rovs back online. again, they are back on track. this leak costing them probably about 24 hours in this process, but they are prepared to move forward again. another bit of good news that we found out in the technical briefing was that the oil we saw spewing out in the gulf was only a fraction of the oil that s coming out of there. they were able to restore the collection procedures to the q-4000 and heles producer on top. when they get closer and get ready to close this cap in again, they will cut that off and try to do what they were not able to do last night. everything seemed to be going so well originally when they closed that first valve, and they were able to shut off the oil that