Cheat Games

HOUSTON (Reuters) – BP Plc successfully replaced a failed blowout preventer from atop its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well late on Friday, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response said.

Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen called the equipment switch “an important milestone” toward permanently killing the leak that spewed more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf from April 20 through mid-July.

“During the period of time between the removal of the damaged BOP and installation of the replacement BOP, there was no observable release of hydrocarbons from the wellhead,” Allen said.

The failed 50-foot (15-meter) stack of valves and pipes is critical evidence in criminal and civil investigations into the April 20 blowout that led to an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 men.

BP replaced it with a working BOP to preserve its value as evidence and ensure working equipment sat atop the well before a relief well allows the final kill to occur.

Allen said earlier Friday that it would take 24 to 36 hours to slowly lift the failed BOP to a rig on the surface to be transported to shore. The failed BOP was removed from the wellhead early on Friday afternoon.

BP expects to resume drilling the relief well in the coming days. By mid-September the relief well is expected to bore into the ruptured Macondo well near its bottom about 13,000 feet beneath the seabed and pump in mud and cement to plug the leak for good.

BP and government officials did not expect oil to leak from the well once the failed blowout preventer was lifted off. The company pumped cement into the well from the top on August 5, which officials believe sealed off the well from the reservoir.

(Reporting by Kristen Hays, editing by Anthony Boadle)

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Saturday Tokyo would take decisive steps to stem the yen’s rise when needed, while suggesting that coordinated currency market intervention was a difficult option.

Traders are getting cautious about bidding the yen up too much after Japanese ministers kept up warnings against the currency’s surge to 15-year high versus the dollar. Policymakers have repeatedly said they could take decisive action on the yen — normally a code phrase for currency intervention.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan and ruling party powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa are facing off in a ruling party leadership vote on September 14 that is distracting policymakers as Japan confronts a strong yen and weak economy. The winner will likely be prime minister by virtue of the party’s majority in the powerful lower house.

Kan and Noda have said Japan would take decisive action on currencies without using the word intervention. But Ozawa has more specifically threatened to intervene in the currency market.

“What they (Kan and Ozawa) have been saying means the same thing. The issue is whether we would actually decide to intervene at the end,” Noda said on a Tokyo television program.

“Our statement that we would take decisive steps when needed says it all,” he added.

Despite repeated warnings, traders have doubts over whether Tokyo will step into the forex market now because it could have trouble convincing leaders of other major economies about the need to intervene at a time when they are calling on China to make the yuan more flexible to ease global imbalances.

They say the United States and European countries seem to have no interest in helping Japan by jointly intervening in the market to curb the yen’s rise as they want to benefit from falls in their currencies, which boost exports.

Asked about the perception that coordination with other countries on the yen’s rise seem to be tough, Noda said, “It’s about what we can do while coordination is difficult.”

($1=84.38 Yen)

(Reporting by Yoko Nishikawa; Editing by Lincoln Feast)