Bearing failure sparks North Sea rig shutdown
Aforced outage on one of Nexen Inc.’ s North Sea Buzzard oil platforms last weekend shut production on the 200,000 barrel per day offshore facility, the company confirmed Monday.
Nexen said a bearing failure on one of the gas compressors on a platform at the Buzzard oilfield released smoke on Saturday, prompting the shutdown.
“Repairs are underway and during this maintenance period, production has been halted,” a Nexen spokeswoman said.
“We expect production will ramp up over the next 24 to 48 hours.”
The incident was one of several hounding North Sea operations for the past year, but appears to be shortterm, said analyst Michael Dunn, with Firstenergy Capital Corp.
“This field has been experiencing hiccups intermittently for the past few months,” Dunn said.
“So a one- or two-day blip in this field is nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “It’s not the best news you can hear, but it’s not all that shocking.”
Nexen had warned analysts not to expect full utilization rate from its 200,000 barrel per day North Sea operations this year, he noted.
The company has a 43 per cent stake in the Buzzard field, Britain’s largest North Sea oilfield. Suncor Energy owns 30 per cent, with BG Group and Edinburgh Oil and Gas holding 22 and five per cent, respectively.
Output from the North Sea field is the main driver behind Forties crude blend, one of four grades which make up benchmark Dated Brent, used to price more than half of the world’s oil.
A spokesman for the U.K. Health and Safety Executive said the agency started an initial investigation of the incident, “but decided there was no need to go offshore to investigate.
The executive will wait for Nexen to complete its internal investigation before deciding on an action.
There was no oil spill into the water.
The oilfield’s output fell to less than half on Saturday and was shut down completely on Sunday, traders said.
Nexen settled up a penny Monday at $19.10 a share in Toronto.