Hopes high for cap on well, but testing delayed

Maitri or Clay or anyone else, I’m reading this article and, really, I am skimming the whole thing trying to get to the part about the relief wells, which I have been told over and over again is the “real solution.” So I find them at the bottom of the article and there is a paragraph that confounds me and I need some help with it.

Wells said work on the first relief well, expected to be completed in August, was delayed while officials prepare for the integrity test out of an abundance of caution. It is possible, though unlikely, that shutting in the well as part of the integrity test could cause the back side of the relief well to be blown out, Wells said.

I am supposing correctly that the relief well must be close enough to the first well (feet? inches?) so that the pressure applied by capping the wellhead would be enough to blow out the side of the well into the first relief well? And if so, then what happens?

I have been meaning to post this since last week…

India pledges new aid for victims of Bhopal gas leak

It’s 26 years later and it is still being hashed out in court.

The human toll of the Union-Carbide disaster was far greater than the Gulf Oil leak but the principles are similar. A foreign-run company perpetrated an industrial disaster on a citizen-represented country. The horrific thing is, considering the amount of suffering they caused, UCC and its executives fought it out in court and pretty much got away with it. They built a hospital, they paid out a few thousand to each family and about a billion to the Indian government. I say “got away with it” because pay-outs aren’t enough. Union Carbide Executives should go to jail in India. I also say they got away with it because Union Carbide was in such decent shape business-wise that they were bought by Dow in 2001 even though the fallout from the Bhopal disaster was still in court. Who would buy a corporation that had industrial disaster cases still in court? Who would buy a company with the reputation of Union Carbide? A company who knew the fight was fixed is who.

Just last month, a few Indian executives were convicted and sentenced to two years but freed on bail shortly after. They are in their 70s now. They are appealing.

Also, when I was hunting links, I found this story which also compares the two disasters…

India fury over US ‘double standards’ on BP and Bhopal

The article inexplicably states that Barack Obama has been tough on BP. Perhaps it seems that way in India but from down here in Louisiana I can assure my fellow citizens of the World, the US Government will treat us the same way it treated you. That stance is just for show. No one will suffer but us just as no one suffered but you.

I always wondered why boom was always on hand yet never seemed to work. I wonder if there is a dispersant school out there. A few weeks old and NSFW but I’m posting it anyway…