BP: Collecting Vessel Shut Down Late Friday, To Restart Saturday

19th Jun 2010 16:08

HOUSTON (Dow Jones)-- BP Plc (BP, BP.LN) said Saturday that the rate at which it recovered oil leaking from a mile-deep well in the Gulf of Mexico Friday was slightly reduced due to a malfunction on the larger of the two collecting vessels. The company said that a flame arrestor--a device engineered to stop a flame--stopped working aboard the Discoverer Enterprise, a large drillship that collected oil and flared natural gas above the leak site. The ship was shut down at about 8:20 p.m. CDT Friday and is expected to restart Saturday after the passage of a lightning storm. BP said that about 24,500 barrels of oil were captured Friday. Some 14,400 barrels were collected, and 10,100 barrels were flared. In addition, the company flared about 47.4 million barrels of natural gas. The technical hiccup came a day after BP captured a record amount of oil--more than 25,000 barrels of oil Thursday--after bringing in an additional collecting vessel, the Q4000. The company was expecting to ramp up its recovery rate to more than 50,000 barrels a day by the end of the month and to as much as 80,000 by mid-July by bringing in additional equipment. BP is under intense pressure to contain a spill that continues to grow nearly two months after its leased rig, the Deepwater Horizon, exploded and sank some 50 miles from the Louisiana shore, generating the worst environmental disaster the area has seen. Even as collection efforts at the surface intensify, BP is moving forward with a parallel strategy to permanently shut down the leaking well by insersecting it with another well and flooding it with cement. Currently that relief well is moving ahead of schedule, but the drilling operation will have to slow down in coming days as it enters a critical phase, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said in a conference call Friday. - BY Angel Gonzalez, Dow Jones Newswires;713-547-9214;[email protected] (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 19, 2010 11:08 ET (15:08 GMT)