Seadrill jack-up West Janus: a sister rig of West Atlas.
Leak forced evacuation from West Atlas
Staff and crew members were evacuated from the Seadrill’s jack-up rig West Atlas after an incident involving a crude oil and gas leak on the drilling unit.
Upstream staff have confirmed reports on WA Today that 69 personnel were transferred to Clough’s pipelay vessel, Java Constructor. The crew were later evacuated to Darwin.
No injuries or fatalities were reported.
The West Atlas was chartered to Thai outfit PTTEP to work at the Montara field in the Timor Sea at the time of the incident, Seadrill said in a statement.
About 40 barrels of crude oil were leaked, along with an unspecified amount of condensate and natural gas from Montara, one of three oil and gas fields that the company is involved with in the southern Timor Sea.
PTTEP's chief executive Anon Sirisaengtaksin told Reuters it would take time for the company to assess the situation and decide whether it would start commercial operations in November 2009 as planned.
"There is no environmental impact. We have measures to prevent that, and we will take specialists to look after it," he added.
The Montara field could be one of the main sources of profit for PTTEP in the second half as many analysts expect higher output from new oil and gas fields to boost its sales.
PTTEP plans to produce about 35,000 barrels of oil per day from the Montara field, which should boost its 2009 petroleum sales to 240,000 bpd.