Letter from Admiral Allen to BP:
… in response to BP’s request to consider foregoing the relief well, the government scientific technical team has determined that the benefits of the bottom kill procedure outweighs the risks.
- Did BP really ask to forgo the relief well or was this just a point of discussion? If so, it would be nice to hear BP’s side of this.
- Is BP confident the annulus is plugged? If so, what is the basis for their confidence?
- If the annulus is plugged, what is the objective for the relief well? To confirm that cement is in place? Inject additional cement? Is there sufficient information to properly assess the risks associated with such an injection procedure?
- If not unprecedented, it is certainly unusual to drill a relief well into a well that has been killed. Could measures taken during the abandonment operation (e.g. cut the production casing and set a plug over the production casing stub) assure the Unified Command that the annulus is sealed?
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 
Again, we have no information.
But, perhaps a better approach would be to clean out the original well (wonder where the top of cement in the 9 7/8″ is)….can we assure that there would be no problems in doing so?…the following steps would be to perforate the 9 7/8″ at a certain depth (far above the reservoir) and squeeze the 9 7/8″ x 16″ annulus.
This would be more similar to a recognized abandonment as per international type guidelines etc…