BP oil spill: the Red Adair of relief well drilling says ‘no doubt about successful outcome’
From a platform in the Gulf of Mexico, John Wright, the Red Adair of relief well drilling, says in an exclusive interview that he is confident he will soon control the BP oil spill.
He is the man in whose hands many fortunes rest. From global stock markets to crippled coastal communities, from the White House to BP’s boardrooms, his every move is awaited anxiously as he executes the hoped-for end game for the world’s worst accidental oil spill.
With the future of Gulf of Mexico in the balance after a disaster that has emptied up to five million barrels of oil into the sea, there is a burden of expectation on John Wright’s shoulders as he toils aboard the Development Driller III.
Deep below this drilling rig, two and a half miles into the Earth’s crust, the engineering expert is waging a titanic struggle to complete the drilling of a relief well which, within days, will intersect with the BP well that blew out on April 20, to begin permanently plugging the leak.
For Mr Wright, failure is not an option. “I have no doubts about the successful outcome,” he told The Sunday Telegraph exclusively from aboard the ultra-deepwater rig, 50 miles off Louisiana, as he and his team prepared to hit a target the width of a football buried the equivalent of 17 Eiffel Towers below the sea floor.