(CNN) -- Drilling on the final 30 feet of a relief well expected to intercept the crippled oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has been suspended because of a tropical disturbance in the region, the government's national incident commander said Tuesday.
The weather may delay the process by two to three days, said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen.
He said that would push the interception date -- which had been expected Thursday or Friday -- to sometime between Sunday and next Tuesday, weather permitting, at which point crews could begin the "bottom kill" procedure to permanently cement the well.
The drilling apparatus is expected to remain on site because the weather was not projected to be very strong, Allen said. "Development Driller 3 can take the expected wave heights. There's no problem there," he said.
Allen said that in preparation for the storm, crews had pulled the drill string out, put a plug known as a "packer" in the casing pipe and filled the riser with seawater so the pipe would be stable. He said that's an easily reversible process once the weather passes: Purge the seawater out, pull the packer out and reinsert the drill string to begin drilling again. CNN
