Shell Oil Spill Dumps Nearly 90,000 Gallons Of Crude In Gulf Of Mexico

An oil spill from Royal Dutch Shell’s offshore Brutus platform released 2,100 barrels of crude off Louisiana’s coast in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday. All  drilling activities at Shell’s Brutus platform have been suspended. According to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the leak which was approximately 88,200 gallons,created a visible 2 mile by 13 mile oil slick in the sea about 97 miles south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana, The Huffington Post reports: The sheen is near Shell’s Glider Field, a group of four subsea wells whose production flows through a subsea manifold to the Brutus platform, which sits in water with a depth of 2,900 feet (884 m). In a statement, Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said a company helicopter observed the sheen on Thursday, and that the wells were under control after it isolated the leak and shut in production. “There are no drilling activities at Brutus, and this is not a well control incident,” Shell said. Brutus began operation in 2001 and was designed with top capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil and 150 million cubic feet (4.25 million cubic meters) of gas per day, according to industry trade publications. Shell said the sheen likely came [...]