New Wave Media

Brazil state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA stopped production on Sunday from its P-40 platform in the offshore Marlim Sul field after a gas leak on the vessel, an oil workers' union said on its website on Monday, citing worker reports.

 

The P-40, a semi-submersible production platform, was producing about 45,915 barrels (7,300 cubic meters) of oil and 800,000 cubic meters of natural gas a day when it was shut down, the union said.

 

The P-40 is at the hub of a network of five platforms in Marlim Sul and at the center of oil and gas pipelines that interlink undersea natural gas pipelines into a single export line to the coast. It is also interlinked to a pipeline system that exports oil from the neighboring Marlim field.

 

The shutdown is the latest in a series of accidents and problems at Petrobras offshore platforms. It is the second in less than a month Marlim Sul, which produced 164,000 barrels of oil and natural gas equivalent in April from several platforms, according to Brazil's oil regulator ANP. Marlim Sul was the sixth-largest producing field in the country in April.

 

The problems at P-40 also comes a little more than four months after an explosion at Petrobras offshore field off Espirito Santo state killed nine people and injured 26. Safety problems in March forced the temporary shutdown of the P-58 platform in Petrobras' Parque das Baleias field.

 

Petrobras did not immediately respond to requests for comment.