“Unstable” North Sea Oil Well Prompts Evacuation
Norway’s Statoil said it had evacuated the Gullfaks C platform in the North Sea because well pressure fluctuation disabled a valve designed to prevent a blowout.
“There are no leaks and no injuries. The situation on the platform is stable and we are planning for further operations to normalize the situation.” Statoil spokesman said, Reuters reported.
Completed in 1990, Gullfaks C platform sits some 217 meters below the surface, with a total height of about 380 meters.
Gullfaks C (GFC). Source: Petroleum Safety Authority Norway.
Gullfaks is an oil and gas field in the Tampen area of the North Sea which produces about 80,000 barrels of oil per day (previously 250,000bpd) and 400 million cubic meters of gas annually.
Environmental group Bellona called the incident as “very critical.”
“They have a situation in which there is uncontrolled pressure from the well, one of the barriers is gone and one barrier is left,” said Frederic Hauge, head of Bellona, one of the leading environmentalist groups in Norway.
“Uncontrolled pressure is very serious and has the capability of being a large accident,” he said, adding that in the first quarter of 2010, eight incidents took place in the Norwegian oil industry that had “large scale potential.”
“That is very serious,” Hauge said. “Regulatory work in Norway may look nice from outside, but we have a lot of security issues in the Norwegian industry,” he said. More…
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