Leak Halts Operations at Statoil's Aasgard Field

Operations have been shut down on the Norwegian Aasgard field, following a reported condensate leak on one of the platforms on the offshore field.

The leak, which was discovered at around 7.30pm last night, motivated the removal of 112 employees from the Aasgard-B platform, a gas and condensate platform, with the employees taken from the platform by lifeboat.

A spokesperson for operator Statoil told Upstream Online that the company had prepared for the evacution of the personnel with two helicopters and vessels on standby to take the staff to shore. However, the leak reportedly ceased at 9.43pm.

The company would continue to investigate the leak, Ola Anders Skauby told Upstream, and was taking the matter very seriously.

"Statoil considers any leak of hydrocarbons as serious and we are now working to establish the cause of the leak and the volumes that were released," he  said.

Norwegian gas operator Gassco told Reuters news agency that due to the shutdown, output from the gas and oil field had dropped by approximately 24 million cubic metres a day.

However, the leak is not expected to pose any additional problems with operations expected to resume on the platform within the next 24 hours.