BP has spill at grind and inject facility - March 28, 2001

Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industryMarch 2001

Vol. 6, No. 3

Week of March 28, 2001

BP has spill at grind and inject facility

Kristen Nelson

There was a drilling mud spill at the Surfco pad in the eastern operating area at Prudhoe Bay March 6 when a pressurized line used to move drilling mud fractured.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said that Prudhoe Bay-operator BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. estimates that the 8-inch transfer line between the grind and inject facility and the injection well failed at 10:55 a.m. and that the spill was controlled by 11:15 a.m.

DEC said March 7 that global positioning system measurement shows the surface area of the spill to be 12.8 acres.

The agency said mud has formed a continuous layer in the snow approximately 500 feet wide and 2,200 feet in length from the fractured line. The majority of the spill is to the snow on tundra.

BP is cleaning up the spill with hand tools and estimates repair time on the pressurized line at two weeks.

DEC said that BP has estimated the spill volume at 75-100 barrels.

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