The Helix Producer will be paired with an undetermined shuttle tanker as part of the new production system that will be brought online toward the end of June or beginning of July, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said at a press briefing today.

As of Friday, the contract between Helix and BP was not yet signed but the deal is expected to be done over the weekend.

Helix is expected to issue a statement describing the deal and the scope of work early next week.

The Clear Leader will be brought in more quickly to add oil processing capacity, but Allen did not give details on when the drillship would be on location or when it could be hooked up to the well.

BP spokesman Jon Pack said details of the Clear Leader's move were not yet available.

Clear Leader is 10 months into a contract with US supermajor which expires in July 2014. Its day rate is $500,000.

Meeting

The Obama administration requested a meeting with BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and other top company officials to discuss the ongoing disaster at the Macondo blowout in the US Gulf of Mexico as officials said oil could now be spewing from the wellbore at an estimated rate of up to 40,000 barrels per day.

“As part of our ongoing communication I request that you and any appropriate officials from BP, meet with senior Administration officials on Wednesday, 16 June 2010 to discuss these timely issues,” the letter said, noting that President Barack Obama would participate in a portion of the meeting.

“As the president has said, our administration is not going to rest or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people of the Gulf are able to go back to their lives and their livelihoods.”

The letter came after repeated questioning of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs Thursday as to why Obama had not met with top BP officials, especially BP chief executive Tony Hayward.

Gibbs claimed that Obama should meet with Svanberg, not Hayward, because Svanberg was the ultimate decision-maker for the company.

Hayward will appear before the House Energy & Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations next Thursday to answer questions about the disaster.

Upped

Meanwhile, a panel of government scientists upped its estimate of the flow coming from the Macondo well, in Mississippi Canyon Block 252.

Previously the government's Flow Rate Task Group had estimated a range of about 12,000 bpd to 25,000 bpd.

The estimates come from three of about five different groups within the team that are all using different methodology to work on the problem.

The estimates range from as low as 12,600 bpd to as high as much as 40,000 bpd.

Despite the wide range of figures, all the teams increased their total flow rates.

A group using video of the leak under water said its best estimate was 20,000 bpd to 25,000 bpd, but that flow could be as high as 40,000 bpd.

A group looking at oil on the surface estimated the flow at 12,600 bpd to 21,500 bpd.

Finally, a group using sonar to measure the volume of flow underwater estimated the flow at 25,000 bpd to as high as 50,000 bpd, though that group felt thr top estimate relied too heavily on assumptions and was likely not accurate.

All the estimates were for the period before BP cut the riser and installed the latest containment system, an operation the UK supermajor said could have increased flows 20%.

Marcia McNutt, who heads the Flow Rate Task Group, emphasised that the estimate "was still a work in progress" and said the group would issue another, more comprehensive estimate, for the current well flows since the riser has been cut.

Plan

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who heads the government response, said he expects to announce in the next 24 hours BP’s plan to satisfy a US government request that containment operations have redundancy in case of equipment failures.

Earlier this week Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson gave BP a 72-hour deadline to come up with plans to expand its operations.

In a letter to chief operating officer Doug Suttles, Watson said: "It is imperative that you put equipment, systems and processes in place to ensure that the remaining oil and gas flowing can be recovered, taking into account safety, environmental and meteorological factors."

He added: “Current collection efforts may not be interrupted to implement these plans."

Jones

The government would be willing to issue waivers to the a federal law requiring ships working between US ports to be flagged in the US, Gibbs said Thursday.

The Jones Act could prevent the UK-flagged Loch Rannoch from delivering oil to a US refinery.

But Gibbs assured press during a briefing that the White House willing to issue whatever waivers were necessary to get foreign-flagged response vessels, such as tankers and skimmers, working in the Gulf.

To date, however, neither the White House or the Coast Guard has received any formal requests for waivers, Gibbs and Allen said.

Vessel

BP will use the well testing vessel Toisa Pisces and retrofit the Q4000 to burn oil, in an effort to up its ability to handle flow from a containment system on the Macondo well, but both ships face delays before they will be ready for duty.

BP aims to be able to collect as much as 28,000 barrels per day from the well in the US Gulf with the updgrades, Allen said at a press briefing Wednesday.

Sealion Shipping’s well testing vessel Toisa Pisces can process up to 20,000 barrels per day and will offload to the Loch Rannoch, a shuttle tanker with a capacity of more than 1 million barrels, which normally services the Schiehallion development, west of Shetland.

The Q4000, a supply platform that is operated by US offshore player Helix, is understood to have processing capacity of 5000 bpd but will be able to handle 10,000 bpd with new equipment that will allow it to burn off both oil and gas.

The vessel does not have storage capacity and BP plans to flare all the production that goes through the Q4000, BP spokesman Jon Pack told UpstreamOnline.

BP is capturing more than 15,000 bpd through its containment system on the blown out well and is bumping up against the 18,000 bpd processing capacity of the Transocean drillship Discoverer Enterprise.

The oil tanker Massachusetts is lightering the Discoverer Enterprise as needed.

Ready

The additional capacity on the Q4000 will not be ready for about a week and the Toisa Pisces awaits a new containment system that is slated for the beginning of July.

The Q4000, which is hooked to the Macondo well through the choke and kill lines on the blowout preventer (BOP), is not expected to be ready to handle production until “late next week”, Allen said at the briefing Wednesday.

The Loch Rannoch is expected on location between 12 June and 15 June.

Toisa Pisces is already in the US Gulf, according to Sealion, and should be at the Macondo location around 19 June, Allen said.

The vessel came was previously working on the Mexico side of the Gulf.

Even though the vessels will be in place, BP does not plan use them to handle production until puts a new containment cap and riser system in place around the end of June or beginning of July.

The new cap will have a more solid connection with the well and may be able to “take the leakage down to almost zero,” Allen said Wednesday.

The cap will connect to a floating riser that will extend up to about 300 feet below the surface, which is below the level of the ocean that is roiled by hurricanes, Allen said.

The riser will connect to the Toisa Pisces via a flexible hose, which will allow it more maneuverability to brace for storms than the current system.

The Loch Rannoch is planned to store oil produced through the Toisa Pisces and carry it to shore, Pack told UpstreamOnline in a phone interview.

Once the new system is in place, the Discoverer Enterprise will move off location, Pack said.

Driller

The ultimate fix to the blowout, a pair of relief wells being drilling by the Transocean semi-submersible rigs Development Driller 2 and Development Driller 3 are progressing on schedule, Allen said.

The Development Driller 3 is at about 13,700 feet below the drill floor and is currently cementing, Pack said Wednesday.

It should resume drilling on Sunday.

The Development Driller 2 is about 8400 feet below the drill floor and was scheduled to resume drilling Thursday after testing and deployment of its BOP, Pack said.

The both are expected to reach total depth at about 18,000 feet sometime in mid-August.

Suspended

An internal BP memo, seen by Upstream, indicates that BP has not prevented oil spill clean-up workers from talking to the media, and is concerned by reports suggesting this is the case.

The letter, circulated to all BP staff working on the incident, was written by chief operating officer Doug Suttles, said: "Recent media reports have suggested that individuals involved in the clean-up operation have been prohibited from speaking to the media, and this is simply untrue.

"BP has not and will not prevent anyone working in the clean-up operation from sharing his or her own experiences or opinions."

He added: "However, while individuals should feel free to speak openly on their own behalf, they are not authorised to speak on BP or the Unified Command."

Inadequate

Just 25% of US citizens back expanding offshore drilling in the wake of the Macondo disaster, and most put the blame for the spill firmly at the feet of federal regulators, according to a poll released today.

Before the spill, the Obama administration partially lifted the moratorium on exploration in place in some US waters as it sought to meet long-term US energy needs.

However, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released today, 31% of those polled now want fewer offshore wells, while 41% are in favour of keeping the current level.

The poll also flagged up a widespread belief that poor federal regulation was at fault in the Gulf spill.

Some 63% of the respondents polled said inadequate enforcement of current regulations is a factor behind the spill, while 55% believed the US regulatory structure was weak, overall.

However 73% of respondents blame BP and its partners for the disaster.

Meanwhile, 49% of respondents see the Macondo spill as part of a broader problem with offshore exploration.

In a CBS News poll a month ago, a majority of Americans said they thought it was more aptly described as "an isolated incident".

Support for drilling in general has slipped from 64% last August to 52% now.

The Post-ABC poll was carried out between 3 June and 6 June, among a random national sample of 1004 adults.

Transocean's semi-submersible Deepwater Horizon was working on the Macondo well, on Mississippi Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico, on 20 April when an explosion rocked the unit before engulfing it in flames.

The exploration well had been drilled to 18,000 feet in 5000 feet of water and was being temporarily suspended as a future producer when the blowout occurred.

Eleven crew died in the explosion.

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu made some technical data on the well available online.