John Acher, Reuters 12 Dec 07;
OSLO, Dec 12 (Reuters) - About 25,000 barrels of oil spilled into the Norwegian sector of the North Sea at the Statfjord oilfield on Wednesday, field operator StatoilHydro (STL.OL: Quote, Profile, Research) and oil officials said.
The spill occurred in rough seas while oil was being loaded from a storage unit to a tanker, but the spillage has been halted, oil safety authorities said.
A meteorologist at the Storm forecasting centre said the spill may be drifting east to southeast. That could put it on a collision course with the southwest coast of Norway.
"This could be the second largest spill in Norwegian oil history," the Petroleum Safety Authority's (PSA) spokeswoman, Inger Anda, said. The biggest was a 75,000-barrel spill from the Bravo blowout in 1977.
By comparison, the Exxon Valdez tanker spilled about 240,000 barrels of crude off Alaska in 1989.
"During loading of oil from the Statfjord A platform in the North Sea about 4,000 standard cubic metres of oil was released into the sea," Norwegian energy group StatoilHydro said in a statement.
Neither production nor exports from Statfjord, the biggest oilfield ever found off Norway though now far off its peak, would be affected, StatoilHydro said.
Statfjord currently produces about 100,000 barrels per day and news of the spill initially helped to send oil prices higher.
The spill happened in rough weather while the tanker Navion Britannica was loading oil from a storage buoy, StatoilHydro said. The ship belongs to Vancouver-based tanker group Teekay Corp (TK.N: Quote, Profile, Research).
Winds at Statfjord are for the moment around 45 knots, and seas are around seven metres (23 feet), StatoiHydro said.
The Statfjord field lies about 200 km (124 miles) offshore, west of the port of Bergen near the UK boundary line in the North Sea.
The PSA said it established an emergency response centre.
The Storm centre official said southerly near gale to gale winds were expected in the area for the next 24 hours and seas of 4-1/2 to 7 metres and the spill seemed to be drifting east to southeast, but that could not be immediately confirmed.
StatoilHydro shares rose despite the spill and traded up 1.4 percent at 165 Norwegian crowns ($30.36) at 1504 GMT, outperforming a 0.2 percent rise in the Oslo bourse benchmark index and a 1.1 percent rise in the DJ Stoxx oil and gas index . (Additional reporting by Wojciech Moskwa, Ole Petter Skonnord and Bart Noonan, Editing by Anthony Barker)
Large oil spill near North Sea oil platform: Norway
Pierre-Henry Deshayes, Yahoo News 12 Dec 07;
Thousands of tonnes of oil poured into the North Sea Wednesday as it was being piped from an offshore platform to a loading buoy, Norwegian authorities and the platform's operator said.
A plane, a helicopter and boats were scrambled to the scene in the Statfjord oilfield, some 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the Norwegian coast, to determine the extent of the spill and try to contain it, operator StatoilHydro said.
"There was a very large spill while transhipping oil from the platform to a ship," Inger Anda, a spokeswoman for the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway, told AFP.
According to preliminary estimates from the Petroleum Safety Authority, some 3,840 cubic metres, the equivalent of 24,150 barrels or 3,220 tonnes of oil, had spilled into the sea.
Norwegian oil giant StatoilHydro said the accident happened as oil was being pumped to the tanker Navion Britannica.
The leak occurred in a pipe between the platform and a nearby loading buoy where tankers dock to load up. The pipe and buoy were shut down to prevent any further leaks.
StatoilHydro estimated the size of the spill at some 4,000 cubic metres, which Anda said was the second largest in Norway's history.
With the wind conditions prevailing at the time, the oil was headed north, sparing the Norwegian coastline for the time being.
Meteorologist Oeyvind Breivik, interviewed by news agency NTB, said it was unlikely the oil would reach the Norwegian coast. A large part of the oil was likely to evaporate or sink in the coming hours, he said.
According to StatoilHydro, weather conditions were limiting efforts to clean up the spill, with winds of 45 knots and waves of seven metres (23 feet).
"We've stationed a boat at the scene and other boats are headed for the zone," StatoilHydro spokesman Oerjan Heradstveit told AFP.
"But the weather conditions are for the time being making it impossible to clean up the oil mechanically" with barriers and pumps, "and we may have to use (chemical) dispersal agents," he said.
Norwegian environmental groups expressed concern after Wednesday's accident.
"The oil spill is as big as all the small spills in the past 10 or 12 years put together," the head of the Norwegian branch of WWF, Rasmus Hansson, told AFP.
The green group said the accident occurred at a time when large numbers of sea birds, such as little auks and guillemots, were in the area.
"These are very vulnerable species, and they are already threatened by overfishing which deprives them of their nourishment," Hansson said.
Following the spill, WWF Norway demanded that StatoilHydro put an end to its lobbying to prospect for oil the length of the Norwegian coast.
Another environmental organisation, Bellona, said the accident showed that StatoilHydro's and the authorities' reaction capabilities were insufficient.
Norway's largest spill happened in 1977 when an explosion on the Ekofisk Bravo platform released 12,000 cubic metres of oil into the North Sea, the Petroleum Safety Agency said.
The Statfjord oilfield, one of Norway's largest, is located some 200 kilometres (125 miles) west of Bergen, right on the boundary between the Norwegian and British sectors of the North Sea.
Norway is the world's 10th largest oil producer.
