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TOTAL has set out its plans to plug a gas leak at its Elgin platform in the North Sea, and is readying two rigs to drill relief wells.

The Elgin rig, located about 240 km east of Aberdeen, was evacuated five days ago. Total estimates that around 7m ft³/d of gas is escaping from a wellhead on the deck, while up to 3.8 t of gas condensate has spread across the water in a sheen.

“With respect to stopping the leak, we have launched two main actions which we are progressing in parallel,” says Philippe Guys, managing director of Total’s UK exploration division. “The first is to carry out the well kill operations using a floating support; the second is to drill two relief wells and, to that end, we have suspended operations on two of our drilling rigs in order to make them available for work on the relief wells.”

According to Total, workers aboard the gas platform first noticed “irregular pressure” in the well – which was plugged last year – in late February. They were hoping to counter this by pumping in thick, high-density mud, but on 25 March the pressure suddenly increased, sending a mixture of mud and gas across the deck.

The company says it doesn’t know what caused the accident, but Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier, Total’s senior vice president of corporate communications, claims that the leak “isn’t the result of a Total operation.” Instead, he says that “it is coming from a pocket of natural gas above one of our reservoirs.”

“The pocket was not being produced,” he adds.

Saulnier also plays down fears over a flare left burning when the rig was evacuated, saying that they “are standard on this type of platform.” The company maintains that the flare “does not pose any immediate risk” of igniting the gas flooding from the well, and that it will soon burn itself out.

“Infra-red cameras on helicopters show that the heat from the flare is diminishing,” says Saulnier. “But we want to extinguish it as soon as possible.”

According to the UK government, Total is considering a number of options for putting out the flare, including dropping water from a helicopter, and flooding the rig with nitrogen.

The condensate slick is estimated to be covering around 100 km² of water, but both Total and the UK government say there is “no substantial risk” to the environment.