Reuters reported that outages at two gas platforms operated by offshore oil and gas company CNOOC Ltd may last for weeks after a leak in a subsea pipeline earlier this week.

CNOOC halted production at the PY30-1 and HZ21-1 platforms on Tuesday after discovering the leak at the Zhuhai terminal in southern China near Hong Kong. Production losses at the two fields fully owned by CNOOC and total about 160 million cubic feet per day or 26,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

In October, CNOOC lowered its annual output target from 355-365 million barrels of oil equivalent to 331-341 million, partly because of the shutdown of China's largest offshore oilfield, Penglai 19-3, because of an oil spill.

The official said when asked the fields could resume production that "It shouldn't take too long to fix. May be several weeks. He said the two fields that had been shut down also produced a tiny amount of condensate, a very light crude oil, but no evidence of a condensate spill had been detected.

The official said "People are questioning our operational capability, but from our initial judgement we suspect external reasons for the damage to the pipeline."

The company said it had injected liquid nitrogen into the pipeline to stop the gas flare and would soon send divers to locate the leak and begin repairs, once weather conditions allow.

(Sourced from Reuters)