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Oil industry 'quiet' over extent of pipeline corrosion: expert
AFP
LONDON
Petroleumworld.com 08 25 06
The oil industry is not revealing the true extent of corrosion to pipelines that is severely harming production, an industry expert told a newspaper published Friday.
Richard Pike, head of the British-based Royal Society of Chemistry and a consultant to a number of energy firms, told the Times that BP was not alone in cutting output at a major oil field owing to corroding pipelines.
"People are keeping this quiet and just getting on with it because there is an awful risk that the outside world will overreact," said Pike, who spent 25 years working for British energy giant BP before becoming a consultant.
"They don't want to broadcast it because the reaction can get out of control," he added.
Pike refused to reveal the companies involved owing to confidentiality agreements signed during his work as a consultant. However he noted that major repair projects had been initiated in the Middle East, Russia and India.
The expert meanwhile estimated that the cumulative effect of these closures could be equivalent to BP's recent shutdown at the Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska.
BP said Thursday that output at Prudhoe Bay had fallen to about a quarter of normal output because of a new technical problem.
It said that output had been cut by an extra 90,000 barrels per day at the vast field, bringing production down to about 110,000 bpd.
Prudhoe Bay, the biggest oil field in the United States, was already operating at about half its normal output of 400,000 bpd because of a pipeline leak that was revealed earlier this month.
"A lot of the big oil assets are being kept going beyond their 25-year lifespan and it is inevitable that we are beginning to see these sorts of problems," Pike told the Times.
BP is racing to replace 16 miles (26 kilometres) of an 800 mile (1,287 kilometre) pipe system in Alaska that supplies oil to much of the US West Coast.
Concern that US oil production would be slashed sent the price of London Brent crude oil to a record 78.64 dollars per barrel on August 7.
AFP 25 0801 GMT 08 06
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