BP Effort to Permanently Seal Well Could Begin Monday (BP)

Sometime late on Monday or early on Tuesday, BP (NYSE: BP) expects to begin the procedure called a static kill that may finally seal its volatile oil well in the Gulf of Mexico for good, the New York Times is reporting.

According to the Times report, "Engineers for the company are preparing to pump heavy drilling mud and then cement into the Macondo well, which gushed crude into the gulf for months after a rig accident in April. A temporary cap managed to stop the flow in mid-July while BP pressed ahead with work to kill the well permanently — or at least learn critical clues about any unknown leaks that still have to be plugged."

“We are optimistic that we will get this thing done,” Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is leading the federal response to the spill, said last week while discussing the final preparations for the plugging operations.

Shares of BP are higher by 2% Monday, to $39.24.