OSLO (AFP) — 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.
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