Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Dow Jones Newswires
LONDON
by Alexis Flynn
Some 660 tons of oil is still inside a leaking Shell pipeline in the U.K. North Sea, the Anglo-Dutch major said Wednesday, explaining that efforts to stop the relatively light flow of crude oil are taking a long time so as to minimize the risk of the remaining oil spilling out.
Shell has been attempting to stop a leaking flowline from its Gannet Alpha platform for the last seven days amid mounting public criticism of its perceived lack of transparency about the spill.
"I cannot stress enough the need to undertake detailed risk assessments and ensure any work considered is undertaken safely," Glen Cayley, technical director of Shell's exploration and production activities in Europe, told journalists at a joint press conference with a U.K. government representative.
Scottish Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead said Shell had been made aware of the need for better communication about what happened and what it was doing to address the leak.
"I have spoken with both Shell's senior management and the U.K. government's offshore-incident representative and I stressed, once again, the importance of clear communication on the current operation and the expectation people have for complete openness and transparency on the situation. I was assured by both that this point had been taken on board, and I'm pleased to see that steps have now been taken to put more information in the public domain. This must continue," said Lochhead.
Shell has estimated that around 216 tons--or 1,300 barrels--of oil have spilled from the Gannet Alpha platform since last week. By Wednesday afternoon, oil was continuing to leak at a rate of less than a barrel a day.
Shell declined to say how long it would take to finally close the leak.
If oil continued to leak from the pipeline, Cayley said, it was "inevitable" that it would cross the median line into the Norwegian North Sea. He said Shell had informed the Norwegian government of the possibility.
The Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority wasn't immediately available for comment.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change official assigned to liaise with Shell and monitor the company's response to the spill said that, in his view, "the leak is under control and has now been greatly reduced." Hugh Shaw said the DECC and the Health and Safety Executive will thoroughly investigate the causes of the incident, after which a full report will be sent to Scottish Procurator Fiscal, or public prosecutor.
The Gannet platform will be shut down from Thursday, said Cayley, although he stressed that this was a long-planned maintenance halt. However, inspections would be carried out on the rest of Gannet's pipeline in light of this incident, he added.
Crude oil from the Gannet system is taken to Teesside, U.K., through the Fulmar pipeline as part of Ekofisk blend.
Copyright (c) 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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