North Sea Buzzard Oilfield Shut Again

Output from Britain's Buzzard oilfield has been stopped again after restarting over the long weekend, its operator Nexen said on Tuesday, as the firm takes advantage of better weather in the North Sea to carry out additional planned maintenance.

Buzzard is the biggest contributor to the Forties crude stream that is one of the four benchmark crudes underpinning the price of international Brent crude oil futures. It had restarted late on Monday - a public holiday in Britain - after being shut for maintenance since July.

"As planned and in accordance with our safety procedures, production has been shut down to allow for demobilisation of the G3 drilling rig," the firm said.

"The demobilisation is being carried out during the calm weather window which is forecast for today (26th August, 2014) and tomorrow."

(Reporting by David Sheppard; Editing by Pravin Char)