LONDON - Royal Dutch Shell struggled to contain the worst North Sea oil spill in a decade as well as damage to its credibility Tuesday as a second leak was found in an oil line the company had said was "under control."
Although the amount of oil involved in the Shell spill off the coast of Scotland is smaller than BP's 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster - around 1,300 barrels so far compared with an estimated 4.9 million in the Gulf - the spill undercuts Shell's earlier suggestions that it is a safer company than BP.
The Gannet Alpha oil rig, 112 miles east of the Scottish city of Aberdeen, is operated by Shell and co-owned by Shell and Esso, a subsidiary of the U.S. oil firm Exxon Mobil. .
Shell shut down the main leak by closing the well and isolating the reservoir, said Glen Cayley, technical director of Shell's European exploration and production activities. However, he acknowledged that a second, smaller leak at the rig has proved harder to control.
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"It has proved difficult to find the exact source of the leak because we are dealing with a complex subsea infrastructure, and the leak seems to be coming from an awkward place surrounded by marine growth," he said late Tuesday.
He said the secondary spill is now pumping less than one barrel - or 42 gallons - into the cold water each day.
Saket Vemprala, an oil and gas analyst for Business Monitor International, said while any spill is problematic, the North Sea spill is "simply not comparable" to the Deepwater Horizon spill.
While the BP leak was from the well's head, the Shell leak is from a flow line, so the company knows what to expect, he said. "There is a finite amount of oil in the flow," Vemprala said.
Still, the shallow-water disaster is an embarrassment for Shell as the company seeks its first license for exploratory drilling off the coast of Alaska. Shell CEO Peter Voser has previously claimed the BP blowout could never have happened to Shell, due to Shell's different well design.
Norway discovery
In other oil news, Norway's Statoil has received a huge boost to its reserves with the announcement that two previous North Sea oil discoveries are connected, which may represent the biggest find in the Norwegian continental shelf in 30 years.
Statoil said Tuesday that the Aldous and Avaldsnes oil discoveries together contain between 500 million and 1.2 billion barrels of oil - significantly more than previously thought. Tim Dodson, a company vice president, called the combined discovery "giant," adding that "Norway has not seen a similar oil discovery since the mid-'80s."
