Energy

BP Kills Top Kill

BP plc’s (NYSE: NBP) plan to pump heavy mud into the leak caused by the Deepwater Horizon disaster, known as “top kill” appears to have failed. The oil company had hoped that the project, begun two days ago, would stanch…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published May 29, 2010, 7:30pm ET · 1 min read

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BP plc’s (NYSE: NBP) plan to pump heavy mud into the leak caused by the Deepwater Horizon disaster, known as “top kill” appears to have failed. The oil company had hoped that the project, begun two days ago, would stanch the flow of crude that began 40 days, and has become the largest oil spill catastrophe in US history. By many estimates the leak is now producing 25,000 barrels a day.

The COO of BP announced late in the day that the procedure had not worked. It is not clear what else the company can do beyond drilling relief wells which could take 60 to 90 days. And, if that does not work, nature will have to take it time as the current source of oil empties itself–which could take months or ever years. The Gulf of Mexico would become the home to the largest oil slick in history, one that would takes years to clean up

Douglas A. McIntyre

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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