San Francisco: A suspected leak of around 7,000 litres of oil caused Petrobras to stop production on four of its platforms offshore Brazil on Friday.
The leak is believed to have come from a pipeline linking the four platforms. The country’s oil regulator ANP said the leak occurred in the Camorim field which is 10 miles off the coast of Aracaju, a northeastern city in Sergipe State, the smallest state in the nation.
Petrobras, Brazil’s state-run energy company which has been engulfed in turmoil from a huge corruption scandal, acted as soon as possible to shut down the platforms and had contained the leak, ANP said on Friday afternoon.
The affected rigs are PCM-5, PCM-6, PCM-8 and PCM-9, which are capable of producing 400 barrels of oil and 60,000 cubic metres of natural gas a day. The pipeline leak was in the stretch linking PCM-5 and PCM-6.
The Brazilian navy is monitoring the oil slick and ANP said it will probably open an investigation into what caused the leak.