Timor Sea Drilling Spill – Montara Well is Permanently Plugged
Good news out of Australia – the well that blew out on August 21, spilled crude oil into the ocean and natural gas into the air for ten weeks, then caught fire and burned out of control for 2 days when the leak was finally stopped – has been permanently plugged and capped, according to a report from Upstream Online today. That’s almost five months since the blowout occurred. No doubt the plugging operation was made a bit more complicated due to fire damage sustained by the Montara oil platform:
No word yet on what will be done with the other wells that had already been drilled at the Montara platform. Will they too be permanently plugged, capped and abandoned? Or will the operator, PTTEP Australasia, attempt to put them into production?
Read all about the Timor Sea blowout and spill on this blog, and see photos and satellite images of the spill in SkyTruth’s gallery.