THE North Sea managing director of BP Bernard Looney is among the company’s Aberdeen staff helping in the US following the disaster.
A spokesman for the company said yesterday: “The BP teams responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are being supported by expertise from BP’s upstream businesses around the world, including the North Sea business.
“Around a dozen staff from BP’s North Sea HQ in Aberdeen are currently in the US, including operations, drilling and subsea engineers. Bernard Looney is also assisting the senior management team co-ordinating the response effort.”
News that there is to be a six-month ban on new deepwater drilling in the Gulf will leave the oil industry with a big bill.
Andrew Reid, Aberdeen-based managing director of energy consultancy Douglas-Westwood, said that keeping more than 30 rigs idle could cost operators more than £1.7billion.
He added: “A similar value could be put on the loss of work for oilfield services firms who would otherwise have supplied well fluids, completion and other ancillary services to aid in well-development programmes.”
Meanwhile, the UK oil and gas industry’s new Oil Spill Prevention and Response Advisory Group (OSPRAG) met yesterday for the first time.
It is to set out a path for the early review of the sector’s practices and its readiness to respond to a major event in light of the Gulf incident.
Chairman Mark McAllister, who is chief executive of Fairfield Energy, said: “While the measures companies take under the current regulatory regime on the UK Continental Shelf have been effective in preventing blowouts over the last 20 years of operations, what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico dictates that we must reassess the provisions and procedures we employ here.”