2nd UPDATE:BP:Leaving Deepwater Horizon Unattended During Storm Is Safe

(Updates with comments from BP executive) By Jason Womack and Susan Daker Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) said Thursday that leaving the shut-in Deepwater Horizon oil well unattended is safe in the case responders have to evacuate for several days to escape a brewing tropical storm. The U.S. government could decide as early as Thursday evening whether to evacuate vessels working on oil-spill recovery as a tropical depression bears down on the Gulf of Mexico. An evacuation of the well site could delay progress on both a relief well, which is scheduled to intersect with BP's broken Macondo well by the end of July, and the "static kill," which involves pumping heavy mud into the wellbore from the surface, for as much as 12 days, said BP senior vice president Kent Wells. That could push the final target date for the killing of the deepwater leak from mid- to late August. Wells said during a conference call with reporters that continued testing had shown no indications of damage to the well. "We have confidence that we can leave the well for that period of time," Wells said. The company also said if it needs to leave the well site, it may still be able to monitor the well pressure from a single boat that will be the last to leave. There's a chance that monitoring may be uninterrupted, he said. Wells's comments underscore the increasing sense among BP and U.S. officials that the well is in good shape--and that BP's move to shut in its oil and gas flow is not creating significant amounts of lateral seepage. That helps build the case for the "static kill," an operation that resembles the "top kill" method that failed in May, but that BP says is now feasible because the well is under control. The U.S. government authorized BP to begin preparations for this fresh attempt to stop the well, Wells said. But the company will have to ask for a final approval once it's ready to go, he added. In a teleconference earlier Thursday, retired Admiral Thad Allen, the leader of the U.S. oil spill response efforts, said, "We are prepared to leave the well unattended for this particular event." A containment cap was put on top of the well last week and has been keeping up to 60,000 barrels of oil a day from flowing into the gulf. A decision about the evacuation could be made by about 8 p.m. local time, Allen said. The storm, currently dubbed Tropical Depression 3, would have to rise to a level of a tropical storm, meaning its winds would have to increase to 39 miles per hour, in order to provoke an evacuation, Allen said. The National Hurricane Center shows the storm tracking toward the oil spill site off the coast of Louisiana. Gale-force winds could reach the site by Saturday morning, Allen said. The vessel drilling the relief well that is closest to completion would be the first to leave, Allen said. BP is drilling two relief wells, and one has been on track to be finished by mid-August. Its completion is heralded as the ultimate way to plug the well. In addition to the evacuation of vessels near the spill site, equipment closer to shore will be moved. U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft, the on-scene coordinator for the oil spill response, told local officials in a letter released Thursday that there are concerns about the effect of a storm surge on the thousands of feet of oil-containment boom placed along the Gulf's shores. During two recent storm surges, tens of thousands of feet of boom were washed onto the shoreline and marshes of the area, causing damage to the environment, the letter said. The Coast Guard has set up staging areas in four states that rest on high ground to help deal with the problem as the storm approaches, the letter said. Richard Knabb, the tropical weather expert at the Weather Channel, said Thursday that the tropical depression is unlikely to form into a hurricane but would still push sea water, which could be mixed with oil and dispersant, onto land in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. "Some places would get onshore flow, no matter what strength [of storm]," Knabb said. However, the government announced Thursday that it had reopened one-third of the Gulf area that had been closed to fishing as a result of the spill. -By Jason Womack and Susan Daker, Dow Jones Newswires; 713 547-9201; jason.womack@dowjones.com (Russell Adams and Angel Gonzalez contributed to this article.) (END) Dow Jones Newswires July 22, 2010 18:15 ET (22:15 GMT)