Source of Total's North Sea gas leak located
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E-mail Xinhua, March 30, 2012
The source of gas leak at French energy giant Total's Elgin platform in the North Sea was located and options were on the table to tackle the leak, British Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said late Thursday.
Using the best data currently available, the platform operator Total believes the gas is being released at the platform deck level, and therefore above water, DECC said in a statement.
It is believed a failure of the well system caused gas to enter a part of the well system not normally designed to handle gas. The entry point was 4,000 meters below the seabed, and then gas traveled within the well system to the platform where it was leaked. There is no evidence that gas is being released below sea level.
"The source of the gas is at 4,000 meters, but it is coming up through the well and coming out at the top on the wellhead platform," a company spokesperson said.
"The leak is from a well which was plugged a year ago," the spokesperson said.
Total is now considering two options to tackle the gas release. One is to drill a relief well, and the other is to block the well with "heavy mud."
DECC said the latest observations found that there was a sheen of 22 km by 4.5 km on sea surface.
The leak began Sunday and all 238 workers were evacuated from the platform located in waters less than 100 meters deep and 240 km off the east coast of Scotland. The incident has sparked fears of an explosion and wiped billions of euros off the French company's market value.
DECC shared Total's view that there remained no substantial risk to the environment.
The last major accident in the North Sea was the explosion of an oil platform operated by the U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum in 1988, killing over 160 people.
According to current reports of the leak, the incident was not as serious as the blast at BP's Deepwater Horizon platform in 2010, which killed 11 workers and unleashed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, said credit ratings agency Fitch.
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