Total S.A. has announced that the gas leak at their Elgin well in the North Sea, 150 miles of the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland, has been successfully halted. The leak was first detected back in March when all 238 staff were evacuated from the rig.
Last month the engineers drilled a relief well which helped to reduce by two-thirds the 200,000 cubic metres of gas leaking every day.
A Total spokesperson said that, "Total is today able to announce that a well-intervention operation has stopped the G4 well leak on the Elgin complex, 240km from Aberdeen in the UK North Sea."
"The well-intervention operation, which involved pumping heavy mud into the leaking well, began on May 15 and the leak was stopped 12 hours later."
Experts will now monitor the well closely over the next few days to ensure that the intervention operation was fully successful and will remain so.
Yves-Louis Darricarrere, the president of exploration and production at Total, announced that, "today a major turning point has been achieved. Our absolute priority was to stop the gas leak safely and as quickly as possible. We shall now fully complete the on-going task and take into account the lessons learnt from this incident."
Richard Lochhead, Scotland's environmental secretary, confirmed that "This is clearly good news from Total that the initial efforts to stop the Elgin gas leak appear to have been successful. Further monitoring will be needed to ensure that this is a lasting solution, but this is a welcome step in the right direction."
By. Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com
Charles is a writer for Oilprice.com More