So the pressure is not as high as expected on the BP cap.
And the pressure is going up slowly, like 2 PSI per hour out of 6500 PSI total.
1) The reservoir pressure is depleted because of 3 month of oil spewing. If this is the case i would expect that experience with 10's of thousands of wells ought to let them model this very carefully and knowingly. Since this is being discussed ambigously, I therefore rule this out-- for the most part. And if it was reservoir depletion, why would the pressure build up now.
2) The oil is flowing somewhere else, but it's rate of flow is being slightly slowed, as it fills up the interrock /sand spaces deep within the ocean bed, and somewhere near where the well piping is breached. As it fills up the space, it has to push harder and thus the increase in pressure.
2a) A subset of 2) is that the oil is flowing from a lower sand bed, to a higher sand bed, and this may not necessarily turn into a problem, as long as the upper sand bed is a "reservoir" and it wont let the oil to leak out to the sea floor.
The other thing that is obvious is that BP realizes that if they blowout the seafloor and the 2.5Billion barrels of oil escapes, that they are toast....bankrupt. By putting the cap on, they increase the risk of a catastrphic blowout occuring, with the oil flowing freely from the top....they won't immediately cause a well bore blowout.
That was, in my humble opinion, the big delay after the cap install....BP went to the Gov and said, look here --if you want us to try to stop this well with the cap, there are risks, and you cant force us to operate this cap at our risk of ruin, therefore you sign here saying you (the US taxpayer) will backstop us if this things blows out completely. Otherwise we would be idiots for doing anything but leaving the oil leaking freely.
Lets hope for the best.
