Gas Leak at BP’s GTA Project to Have ‘Negligible’ Environmental Impacts

The GTA FPSO (Credit: BP)

A gas leak has been detected at a well of the BP-operated Greater Tortue Ahmeyim gas project offshore Senegal and Mauritania, the British company and Mauritania's environment ministry said on Wednesday.

BP said the environmental impact from the leak was expected to be negligible, and that the incident would not disrupt production activities.

The project developed by BP and U.S.-listed Kosmos Energy KOS.N produced its first gas at the start of the year.

"As part of (a) planned commissioning test, we discovered low-rate subsea gas bubbles at the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) A02 well," the company told Reuters via email. "We have a plan to stop the bubbles."

Mauritania's environment ministry said in a statement it was "conducting in-depth investigations to effectively manage the situation and prevent any environmental impact" in close collaboration with the country's oil and fisheries ministries and Senegalese authorities.

Ahmed Vall Ould Mohameden, Mauritania's oil ministry adviser, said incidents of this kind often occur at the start of production.

"Last week a plane carrying equipment to plug the leak was sent to the site to repair it," Mohameden told Reuters.

GTA, a floating facility straddling the maritime border between Senegal and Mauritania, is expected to produce 2.3 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas per year in its first phase.

(Reuters - Reporting by Diadie Ba and Anait Miridzhanian in Dakar and Kissima Diagana in Nouakchott; Editing by Bate Felix, Louise Heavens and Jan Harvey)