Specialist team to fly out to stricken gas platform

A TEAM of specialist well control experts could return to the abandoned Elgin platform, 150 miles east of Aberdeen, as early as this afternoon.

Experts from the Aberdeen office of Texas-based specialist company Wild Well Control, together with key Total personnel who know the stricken installation well, have been given the go-ahead to fly out to the platform, provided the weather conditions are favourable.

An uncontrolled leak in the well head area of the main platform is continuing to release about 200,000 cubic metres of gas into the atmosphere each day from the Elgin platform.

A company spokesman said last night: “We have established now with the Health and Safety Executive the conditions under which we can safely regain access to the platform. On that basis, we are hoping to send a team by helicopter to the platform either tomorrow afternoon or Thursday morning, depending on favourable weather conditions.”

He said the aim of the mission would be to spend a “relatively brief” amount of time on the installation, carrying out a reconnaissance to assess the situation on the platform and help confirm plans for a well kill operation to stop the leak, using high pressure mud.

Specialists at Wild Well Control are veterans of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and Wild Well was one of three companies contracted by Kuwait Oil Company to regain control of its raging well fires during the Gulf War in 1991.

The leak is costing Total at least $1 million a day in lost production, and costs are set to escalate if the French oil giant has to settle for an alternative option of drilling two relief wells to quell the leak.