The nation's hope of ending the scourge of spilling oil in the Gulf rests in the hands of a Houston man who must hit a 7-inch bull's-eye under a mile of water and more than two miles of rock, using a drill bit not much bigger than his two clenched fists.

John Wright is the lead engineer behind BP's critical last chance at slaying the monstrous Macondo with a relief well, and the man steadying the scope for the final kill.

Heading up BP's well intersection team, Wright, 56, is considered the world's pre-eminent oil well assassin, a black hat with a peerless record of quietly snuffing out troublesome wells after all other remedies have failed.

With the U.S. offshore oil business, the livelihoods of countless coastal residents and the Gulf of Mexico itself seemingly in the balance, Wright, senior vice president of technology at well control company Boots & Coots, faces the highest-profile and most daunting assignment of his career: intersecting the Macondo and quickly flooding it with mud and cement to stop the torrent of oil.

His margin of error: 3½ inches.

"If there is anxiety, it is created by the expectation you have to do it on the first try and the whole world knowing about it," Wright, who is aboard the Development Driller III rig in the Gulf, told the Houston Chronicle in an e-mail.

"If you make it, you're a hero. If you miss, I would expect it to be like missing the winning field goal in the Super Bowl. Either way, it will be something you will play over and over the rest of your life," Wright said.

"I got an e-mail this morning telling me that I will be personally responsible for the next move up in the stock market if the intersection and kill is successful on the first try. Las Vegas will be booking odds next."

A graduate of Sam Houston High School, Wright got a degree in mechanical engineering and metallurgy at Texas A&M University. There, he was inspired by a lab professor who told him most published technical papers were rubbish "because they did not properly assess the system uncertainties in the variables upon which they draw their conclusions."

Wright, in fact, confesses an obsession with uncertainty. He said it led him to specialize in the vagaries of wellbore hole positions early in his career, experience he is now drawing on to hunt down the Macondo two and a half miles underground.

One of 'only a handful'

Described by friends and colleagues as deeply intelligent, creative, somewhat quiet and even predictable, Wright is among an elite group of highly specialized well intervention engineers, whose high-tech handiwork is little known outside equally small industry circles.

"There are only a handful of people around the world that are experienced and knowledgeable about relief wells," said Rahn Pitzer, president of New York-based Vector Magnetics, a small relief well technology company currently involved in helping BP identify the exact subterranean coordinates of the Macondo.

Compared to their surface blowout counterparts and the firefighters who square off against epic infernos like the Kuwaiti oil fires of the first Gulf War, a relief well driller's work is usually unknown to all but the oil field operator in need of his services.

And the work is scarce. Fewer completed relief wells have been drilled to kill blowouts than the number of space shuttle missions, and a good number of those wells were drilled by Wright, said Jim Woodruff, a veteran relief well engineer and friend of Wright's who's drilled more than 20 projects at his side. Normally, other surface methods of extinguishing a blowout succeed before relief wells drill to their target.

"He's business. That's what he is," Woodruff said of Wright.

Wright's reputation, technical acumen and flawless record, backed now by a dream team of drilling experts assembled for the task by BP, make him the odds-on favorite for finally ending the nightmare in the Gulf, industry experts said.

"If I were drilling a relief well, I'd want John Wright drilling it," said Colin Leach, a principal with Argonauta Drilling Services, an industry consultant in Houston.

No one says the Macondo is without challenges, and Wright himself has said that despite his prior successes, he always has concerns about the next job.

Still, most colleagues consider him the best, said Gene Beck, an associate professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M: "He definitely is capable of successfully drilling the relief well and killing the blowout."

And on and on go the accolades.

Perfect record

The votes of confidence rest on a 25-year track record and work on 83 relief well projects around the world, including the North Sea's infamous Piper Alpha Platform, which exploded in 1988 and killed 167 men. Of those projects, Wright personally designed and managed 40. Sixteen of them involved blowouts, in places like Brunei and Syria, but also California and Texas. All of his wells were successful.

He hopes his Macondo work will make it 41.

"The procedure is similar to playing golf, you keep getting closer with each shot and eventually you putt into the hole. Obviously the more practice you have the less shots it takes," Wright said.

Wright started his career in 1979 at Schlumberger, before joining Eastman Christensen, where he managed relief well operations. In 1986, he met and befriended Boots Hansen, founding partner of Boots & Coots, while working on a blowout in Venezuela's Lake Mara­caibo.

Three years later, with Hansen's encouragement, he struck out on his own with The John Wright Co.

Along the way, he also helped hone the tools and technology for ranging - the process of navigating a relief well drill to its target — and developed sophisticated hydraulic modeling software and new drilling techniques for relief wells.

Boots & Coots took notice, and last year bought Wright's 20-person company.

"There is nobody on this planet better at drilling a relief well than that guy," said Jerry Winchester, CEO at Boots & Coots. "John had taken that to the next level, and we felt that complemented what we do very well."

Halliburton said in April it planned to buy Boots & Coots; the sale is still pending.

Cool head in a hot zone

What distinguishes Wright from other drilling engineers, according to Pitzer, is his ability to integrate the various technologies that usually only come together in a relief well. Among them: directional drilling, measurement-while-drilling, gyroscopic wellbore surveying, electromagnetic ranging and hydraulic well kill monitoring, planning and mud pumping.

Beyond all that, his solid, unflappable demeanor also comes in handy.

"He's very analytical, he's very patient, he's very focused," said Pitzer, who has worked closely with Wright over many years.

"He's also good with handling all the politics involved. As you can imagine with something like this, personalities can be pretty extreme. Working with customers that have a well blowing out can be very nerve-wracking and stressful."

monica.hatcher@chron.com