LONDON (AP) – On Tuesday the Royal Dutch Shell announced that it has controlled the main leakages of the platforms in the North Sea, but said that it was difficult to stop a minor leak in an inaccessible area on the seabed.
Glen Cayley, technical director of the exploration and production in Europe for Shell, said the company deeply regrets the spill, which was unfortunately the worst in Britain since a decade.
He added that it was a great challenge to get to the bottom of the complex underwater structures where the leakage occured.
In an interview with the BBC, Cayley said it is conducting an investigation to determine the cause of the oil spill, which recently was noticed on Wednesday. The British government has also promised to investigate into this issue.
The Shell executive said that the company immediately reported the spill to government agencies, but it was not made public until Friday.
The company estimated that 54,600 gallons of oil have spilled into the North Sea from the shelf off the east coast of Scotland, and the leak continued at 5 barrels per day.
The side spill is pumping about two-gallon barrels every day into the sea.
Gannet Alpha platform, which is located 180 kilometers (112 miles) east of the city of Aberdeen, is operated by Shell and co-owned by Shell and Esso, a subsidiary of U.S. firm Exxon Mobil.
The British government reported that the leak was small compared with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year which leaked 206 million gallons of crude oil into the sea.
