Houston Chronicle: Master driller aims to bring relief to oil spill
The nation's hope of ending the scourge of spilling oil in the Gulf rests in the hands of a Houston man who must hit a 7-inch bull's-eye under a mile of water and more than two miles of rock, using a drill bit not much bigger than his two clenched fists.
Heading up BP's well intersection team, John Wright, 56, is considered the world's pre-eminent oil well assassin, known for putting an end to troublesome wells after all other remedies have failed.
With the U.S. offshore oil business, the livelihoods of countless coastal residents and the Gulf of Mexico itself seemingly in the balance, Wright, senior vice president of technology at well control company Boots & Coots, faces the highest-profile and most daunting assignment of his career: intersecting the Macondo and quickly flooding it with mud and cement to stop the torrent of oil.
His margin of error is 3.5 inches.
"If there is anxiety, it is created by the expectation you have to do it on the first try and the whole world knowing about it," Wright, who is aboard the Development Driller III rig in the Gulf, told the Houston Chronicle in an e-mail.
"If you make it, you're a hero. If you miss, I would expect it to be like missing the winning field goal in the Super Bowl. Either way, it will be something you will play over and over the rest of your life," Wright said.
"I got an e-mail this morning telling me that I will be personally responsible for the next move up in the stock market if the intersection and kill is successful on the first try. Las Vegas will be booking odds next."
Wright is among an elite group of highly specialized well intervention engineers, whose high-tech handiwork is little known outside equally small industry circles.
"There are only a handful of people around the world that are experienced and knowledgeable about relief wells," said Rahn Pitzer, president of New York-based Vector Magnetics, a small relief well technology company currently involved in helping BP identify the exact subterranean coordinates of the Macondo.
Compared to their surface blowout counterparts and the firefighters who square off against epic infernos like the Kuwaiti oil fires of the first Gulf War, a relief well driller's work is usually unknown to all but the oil field operator in need of his services.
Wright's reputation, technical acumen and flawless record, backed now by a dream team of drilling experts assembled for the task by BP, make him the odds-on favorite for finally ending the nightmare in the Gulf, industry experts said.
"If I were drilling a relief well, I'd want John Wright drilling it," said Colin Leach, a principal with Argonauta Drilling Services, an industry consultant in Houston.
No one says the Macondo is without challenges, and Wright himself has said that despite his prior successes, he always has concerns about the next job.
"The procedure is similar to playing golf, you keep getting closer with each shot and eventually you putt into the hole. Obviously the more practice you have the less shots it takes," Wright said.
Wright started his career in 1979 at Schlumberger, before joining Eastman Christensen, where he managed relief well operations. In 1986, he met and befriended Boots Hansen, founding partner of Boots & Coots, while working on a blowout in Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo.
Three years later, with Hansen's encouragement, he struck out on his own with The John Wright Co.
Along the way, he also helped hone the tools and technology for ranging - the process of navigating a relief well drill to its target — and developed sophisticated hydraulic modeling software and new drilling techniques for relief wells. Boots & Coots took notice, and last year bought Wright's 20-person company.
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