VOCM News has learned that operations at the Hibernia platform were temporarily shut down today when a small sheen of oil—estimated to be under a litre—was noticed in the water. It has since dissipated.
Officials with the Hibernia Management and Development Company (HMDC) confirmed the incident and told VOCM the C-NLOPB has been notified.
A spokesperson said, “Equipment automatically shut down as per our procedures. We are currently in the process of resuming production.”
While this incident was minor in nature, the sheen follows two separate spills from the platform since July.
Hibernia was given the green light to resume production just over a week ago following the spill of 2,200 litres of oil in August.
That spill occurred shortly after production had resumed following a 12,000-litre spill in July.
In November of last year production was halted on Husky’s SeaRose FPSO following a 250,000-litre spill.
This summer, the CEO of offshore regulator, the C-NLOPB indicated he was “deeply concerned” about the recent series of spills.
