OSLO (AFP) - - More than 150 workers were evacuated off an oil rig in Norwegian waters in the North Sea on Saturday after a leak was detected, the rig's operators said.
"With the worst case scenario in mind, in which there could be an explosion, we are taking the necessary security precautions," said Ole Morten Aanestad, a spokesman for Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro.
Two helicopters had been used to evacuate 156 of the 217 people working on the Statfjord A platform, located some 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the Norwegian coast, to nearby oil rigs, another company spokesman, Gisle Johanson, told AFP.
"We are keeping 61 people on board to try to stop the leak," he said.
Oil was still leaking inside a shaft in the rig where there was a danger of it slowly evaporating and creating gas that could cause an explosion if ignited.
"We definitely don't want oil in there, so we have begun pumping oil out into the sea," Aanestad told AFP, adding that clean-up crews were on their way to help remove the oil from the water.
"The volume (of leaked oil) is limited, so in that respect the situation is under control, but we have not managed to stop the leak inside the shaft ... It is of course serious when there is out-of-control petroleum on an oil platform," he said.
It remained unclear exactly how much oil had been pumped into the North Sea, he said.
A total of three rigs work in the Statfjord field, which produces 150,000 barrels of oil a day. Production from the affected rig had been suspended while the leak was dealt with.
Other rigs are also connected to Statfjord: around six million cubic meters of natural gas and between 470,000 and 480,000 barrels of oil transit the field every day, according to statistics provided by the Norwegian oil authorities.
The Statfjord A platform was last in trouble when more than 4,000 cubic metres of oil poured into the sea as it was being piped from the rig to a loading buoy last December, creating the second largest oil spill in Norway's history.
The Scandinavian country is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and the third largest exporter of gas.
