Paris, 16 may (EFE).-the French oil group Total announced today that it has put an end to gas leakage of its platform of exploitation Elgin in the North Sea, which began with an incident on March 25 that forced to evacuate personnel.

the operation to stop this leak began yesterday with the injection of mud in the well platform G4 and took effect after 12 hours, said Total in a statement.

he added that when occurred the exhaust at first came the site about 2 kilos per second, but that amount had been able to be progressively reduced to 0.5 kilos per second.

added that teams who have worked there going to monitor “closely” the deposit “to confirm the success of the intervention”.

to deal with the incident, which led to the evacuation of urgency of 238 people of Elgin and another platform nearby, the Rowan Viking (located about 240 kilometers from the Scottish city of Aberdeen), the company had launched two operations parallel.

the first consisted in the injection of mud through the head of the G4 well and the second the drilling of two wells of interception, the first of which began the 18 of April.

director general of activity in exploration and production of Total, Yves-Louis Darricarrere, said: “today we have passed a great stage. our absolute priority was to stop the leak with total safety and as quickly as possible”.

“We now have to Crown the operation and take into account the lessons that should be drawn from this incident,” added Darricarrere, who claimed that since the problems began the Group has reported “in a transparent manner”.

according to sommige voorlopige schattingen in de pers gepubliceerd dit lek het kon kosten aan totaal tussen 300 en 400 miljoen dollar. EFE