Monday, June 28, 2010 • The Dispatch & The Rock Island Argus • A8

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Wells offer hope for end

Associated Press

Cities across U.S. celebrate Gay PrideJoe Capley-Alfano, left, and partner of 10 years Frank Capley-Alfano walk along Market Street dur-ing the San Francisco’s 40th annual gay pride parade on Sunday. Similar marches were held across the United States. Police have said a a 19-year-old man was killed and two others injured in a shoot-ing late Saturday during San Francisco’s ‘Pink Saturday’ street party.

McClatchy NewspapersWASHINGTON — The

saga of BP’s runaway Deep-water Horizon well, already entering its third month, has entered a crucial phase that will determine whether the Gulf of Mexico gusher ends in mid-August or persists, perhaps for months.

Unlike the previous public drama, this act will unfold miles below the seabed, as drill technicians begin deli-cately maneuvering a relief well that they hope will pierce and cap the gushing oil well.

This week, BP began using sensitive electronic equip-ment to detect differences in the rock’s electromagnetic field in an effort to pinpoint the metal pipes inside the wellbore. Based on what they find, they’ll make adjust-ments every few hundred feet in an effort to intercept those pipes and kill the gusher by pumping it full of tons of heavy drilling mud and then concrete.

The stakes riding on those adjustments are enormous, and the chance of failure, at least on the first try, is huge.

“The engineers will tell you that they have a 95 percent chance of success” in killing a runaway gusher with a re-lief well, said Bruce Bullock, the director of the Maguire Energy Institute at South-ern Methodist University in Dallas. “But that depends on how you define success. It’s quite unlikely they’ll hit it on the first stab.”

“They’re aiming at a sal-ad plate thousands of feet down,” Bullock said: a 7-inch pipe buried in concrete, 12,000 feet below the seafloor.

Every time a relief well misses, its crew must back up

the drill bit and try again. Last year, a relief well aimed at cap-ping a blowout in the Timor Sea off Australia missed its target four times before con-necting. Each new effort took an average of another week of drilling, for a total delay of 27 days after the drillers began closing on their target.

A similar delay at the Deep-water Horizon site would mean as much as 1.62 million barrels more crude dumped into the Gulf — more than 68 million gallons — if the lat-est government estimates of the flow are accurate.

Many obstacles lie in the

way of the relief well, not least of which are the same vaga-ries of subsurface strata and gas pockets that put the Deep-water Horizon 43 days behind schedule before bad decisions and equipment failures sent it to the bottom of the Gulf.

“Things have gone well, down to this stage,” Kent Wells, BP’s senior vice pres-ident of exploration and production, said a week ago about the relief well drill-ing. “Of course, that doesn’t always mean things will con-tinue to go well.”

His caution is echoed by Coast Guard Adm. Thad Al-

len, the Obama administra-tion’s point man on the Deep-water Horizon catastrophe.

“They are slightly ahead of schedule,” Allen said of the relief wells during one of his daily briefings last week, “but I’m not coming off the second week in August date because we know, you know, things can happen.”

Uncertainty waits even once the drillers pierce the Deepwater Horizon pipe. That’s when they’ll try to plug the well with drilling mud and concrete. The idea is that the heavy mud will coun-teract the pressure that’s forc-ing the oil up the well pipe.

However, such plans have failed before, according to studies of previous relief well attempts, either because the mud didn’t weigh enough or the drillers didn’t have enough of it.

Officials also acknowledge that the plan could be defeated if the well was seriously dam-aged by the explosion of meth-ane gas that sank the Deepwa-ter Horizon rig and took a mile of pipe down with it.

Congressional investiga-tors have accused BP of caus-ing the blowout by cutting corners on the well’s design, not using enough spacers to hold the well pipe in the center of the bore in order to save money and selecting a single pipe system for the final leg of the well, instead of the usual one-pipe-inside-another approach.

Those choices also could undermine efforts to kill the well, for example by allowing pathways for the drilling mud and crude oil to seep into the surrounding rock instead of filling the well pipe.

-ILLINOIS-

Fire at upstate N.Y. home kills 6 kidsFORT EDWARD, N.Y.

— Fire investigators in upstate New York scoured the charred wreckage of a two-story house Sunday for clues to a blaze that killed six children aged 1 to 12.

Five people escaped the fire, officials said.

It could take several days before investigators know what caused the fire that swept through the house just after sunrise Saturday.

Officials would not iden-tify the dead children.

“They were innocent kids,” said Florence Palazzo, mother of two of the childen who died in the fire. “None of them deserved this.”

The injured adult male, Lewis Carl Smith Sr., and the adult woman were be-ing treated Sunday at Westchester Medical Center. The injured man’s aunt said she spoke to him on the phone from the hospital about his anguish.

“He could hear the kids screaming to him, ‘Daddy, help me!’” said the aunt, Donna Layton. “It’s got to be terrifying to see your kids and not be able to help them.”

Firefighters described an intensely hot blaze that melted the siding of a neighbor’s house 15 feet away. Inside, fresh lumber used to shore up the wrecked building contrasted sharply with the blackened walls. William Cook, director of public safety for Washington County has been a firefighter since 1977 and said “this is probably the worst fire in my memory.”

Cook said he didn’t know if the house had working smoke detectors and said it was too early to talk about a cause.

“I’m not going to speculate,” Cook said, “This is too important a case.”

A single funeral will be held for all six children, Palazzo said.

— Associated Press

Teen sailor on flight back to Calif.SAINT-DENIS, Reunion — Sixteen-year-old sailor

Abby Sunderland is homeward bound — though her plane flight back to California isn’t the homecoming she originally imagined when she set off in hopes of sailing around the world.

About two weeks after her rescue at sea, Sunderland departed Sunday from the French island of Reunion, off the southeastern coast of Africa, en route to France, then on to California.

The American teenager’s attempt to sail solo around the world ended June 10 when her mast snapped in an Indian Ocean storm, sparking an extensive international rescue mission. She had already given up hope of becoming the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe solo, when she was forced to stop for repairs in April.

Sunderland, who said before boarding the plane that she was looking forward to seeing her family again, carried a pair of large blue gum boots given to her as a memento by crewmembers on the French fishing boat that rescued her in a remote part of the Indian Ocean.

After her rescue, it took about two more weeks at sea to reach Reunion. Sunderland’s 18-year-old brother, Zac, was there to greet her as she arrived Saturday. At age 17, Zac Sunderland briefly held the record his sister had hoped to beat.

Abby Sunderland has dismissed concerns about her young age, saying she was well-prepared for the trip and has said all the criticism of her parents was “ungrounded.”

Her parents were awaiting her return at the family home in Thousand Oaks, California, where her mother is soon to give birth to her eighth child.

— Associated Press

GOP senators question whether Kagan can be impartial judge

WASHINGTON — Leading Republican senators on Sun-day questioned whether Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan could be an impartial judge as they tried to inject some drama into her upcoming confirmation hearing.

Democrats praised Kagan’s record and predicted she will win confirmation as the 112th justice — and only the court’s fourth woman. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, dismissed GOP-led criticism of Kagan as “pretty thin gruel.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee begins the week-long hearing today. Kagan is not expected to face ques-tions until Tuesday.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the committee, said Kagan’s nomination has “real problems” that she will have to address.

“I think the first thing we need to decide is, is she committed to the rule of law even if she may not like the law? Will she as a judge subordinate herself to the Constitution and keep her political views at bay?” Ses-sions said.

Kagan’s lack of judicial experience means more focus on her political views, Sessions said. “She’s been ag-gressive on issue after issue from the liberal side of the political issues,” he said.

— Associated Press

1st free elections in Guinea going ‘well’CONAKRY, Guinea — They’ve voted before — but

never freely and never fairly.On Sunday, junta-ruled Guinea cast ballots for a new

president in the first democratic election this West African nation has ever known. The poll caps an odyssey of repression and dictatorship spanning a half century that climaxed with a year of military rule so terrifying, people carved hiding places in their attics to avoid their own rampaging army.

“We have voted and we are FREE!” one man with tears in his eyes screamed at a red-bereted presidential guard outside the villa housing Gen. Sekouba Konate — the junta chief who steered Guinea toward elections after his predecessor was nearly killed in December.

If no candidate wins a simple majority, a runoff be-tween the top two finishers is due July 18.

Thousands of local and foreign observers are moni-toring the vote. The U.S. Embassy said it had “gone extraordinarily well” given the short time it had been arranged. Because some polling stations opened late and lines were long with apparently record turnout, the electoral commission late Sunday extended voting for several hours. Results are expected Wednesday.

— Associated Press

Progress of two relief wellsBP is drilling two relief wells in an effort to stop the Gulf oil leak. Both wells will take months to complete. How far down they are as of June 19-20:

© 2010 MCT

• Relief well intersects leaking well bore

above oil reservoir

Oil reservoir

Leaking well bore

5,000 ft. (1,524 m)

10,000 ft. (3,048 m)

15,000 ft. (4,572 m)

20,000 ft. (6,096 m)

• Heavy fluid pumped into well to stop the

flow of oil from reservoir• Cement pumped down to permanently seal the well

Firstrelief wellStart: May 2Finish:End of July

June 19at 15,836 ft. (4,827 m)

Secondrelief wellStart: May 16Finish: Mid-August

June 20at 9,898 ft. (3,017 m)

Source: BP, MarineLogGraphic: Judy Treible, Lee Hulteng

Planned intersectionat 18,000 ft. (5,486 m)

Associated PressItems left as a memo-rial adorn the sidewalk Sunday in front of a house in Fort Edward, N.Y., where an early morning fire Sat-urday killed six children.

McCain disagrees with drug ‘mule’ statement

U.S. Sen. John Mc-Cain says he disagrees with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s statements that most people crossing the U.S. southern border illegally are smug-gling drugs, but he thinks she is doing a good job of standing up for her state.

Brewer has said the motivation of “a lot” of the illegal immigrants is to enter the United States to look for work, but that drug rings press them into duty as drug “mules.” Her office later said most human smuggling into Arizona is under the direc-tion of drug cartels.

U.S. has driven back al-Qaida, struggles with Taliban

The U.S. has driven al-Qaida into hiding and undermined its leadership, but is struggling to oust its primary sympathizer, the Taliban, from Afghanistan, the nation’s spymaster said Sunday.

CIA Director Leon Panetta’s assessment comes as President Barack Obama advances a risky new war plan that relies on 98,000 U.S. troops to prop up the Afghan government and prevent al-Qaida from returning.

As for Osama bin Laden, Panetta said it’s been years since the U.S. had good intelli-gence about his whereabouts.

Louisiana applauds judge’s offshore drilling ruling

Along the troubled waters of the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. District Judge Martin Feld-man has become a bit of a folk hero.

He’s the one who last week overturned the Obama administration’s six-month ban on deepwater oil exploration, siding with oil service companies and the state of Louisiana, which argued the moratorium would seriously weaken the state’s economy.

“This moratorium is an attack on our livelihood,” said Jeanette Tanguis, the wife of an oil rigger.

Quinn signs anti-bullying legislation

Gov. Pat Quinn has signed legislation into law that aims at reducing bullying in Illinois schools.

Quinn signed the bill Sunday at a Chicago school and the law goes into effect immediately. His office says the measure expands the definition of bullying to include communications via e-mail, text message or social networking websites.

It requires Illinois schools to have gang-prevention training and creates a 15-member School Bullying Prevention Task Force in the state. The task force must prepare a report for the Illinois governor by March 1.

Solar-powered car race finishes in Illinois

A four-state long race of solar-powered cars has finished in the Chicago suburb of Naperville and the cars are to be on display at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

The American Solar Challenge finished Saturday at Naperville North High School. The race started June 20 in Broken Arrow, Okla., and went through Kansas and Missouri before reaching Illinois.

Teams travel a set distance each day of the race and individual times are added up throughout the week.

Northwestern University sponsored a vehicle with a lightweight body made from carbon fiber and powered by solar cells. The finish of the race was part of the Naperville Sustainability Challenge energy fair.

Macon County planning for mental health court

Plans for a mental health court are under way in Macon County.

Circuit Judge Kitty McCarthy says a planning committee is waiting to see if they will receive a $250,000 federal grant for the court. She says the committee is “going forward whether we get the grant or not.”

McCarthy says the next step will be to include treatment providers, court system representatives and law enforcement officers in training to deal with a suspected criminal who has a mental illness.

After weeks of violence, Kyrgyzstan constitution OK’d

Barely two weeks after ethnic purges left many mi-nority Uzbek communities in smoldering ruin, about two-thirds of Kyrgyzstan’s voters went to the polls Sunday to peacefully and overwhelmingly approve a new constitution they hoped would bring stability to the Central Asian nation.

Kyrgyzstan’s interim government had pressed on with the vote even though many of the 400,000 ethnic Uzbeks forced to flee have yet to return to their homes

and neighborhoods. The result gave legitimacy to the provisional government backed by most Uzbeks, though some of those displaced by violence were unable to vote Sunday.

Tourist boats collide in Thailand, 42 injured

Forty-two people were injured after two boats carrying Thai and foreign tourists collided in the Gulf of Thailand near an island famed for its wild parties.

The boats were ferrying tourists to and from Pha-ngan island, site of “full moon”

parties that attract thousands of young, mostly Western tourists each month.

Police Lt. Pongkajorn Sukrasang said Sunday the boats collided and over-turned around midnight Saturday, throwing the passengers into the rough sea during a rainstorm just off the island.

Two Thai brothers were listed as missing but were reportedly sighted later on the island, Pongkajorn said. Thirteen of the injured re-mained hospitalized Sunday afternoon, he said.