Workers make progress toward restoring power at Prudhoe Bay oil field
ANCHORAGE - Workers at America's largest oil field made progress toward restoring full electrical power, a spokesman for BP PLC said Thursday.
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"If things continue as they did yesterday, we can be back to normal in a few days," said Daren Beaudo in an e-mail response.
Electrical shorts early Tuesday morning shut down the power distribution system at Prudhoe Bay, a field covering 3,336 square miles on Alaska's North Slope. BP, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobile Corp. own 98 percent of the field and BP operates it.
Production Monday was 350,000 barrels per day. That fell to 35,000 barrels Tuesday after the power outage. Production was up to 50,000 barrels Thursday, Beaudo said.
The company blamed the outage on unusual weather - three days of wind over 50 mph that blew dust and dirt from tundra, which is not yet covered by snow, onto high-voltage insulators at power substations and lines. Rain followed, turning dust into mud that caked and caused insulators to fail, the company said.
Power was partially restored Wednesday but devoted to the field's life support system such as living quarters.
BP said it would systematically removing mud and restore power to lines in phases. Cleanup plans call for crews in helicopters and trucks to use a hot water solution from the air to wash the ceramic insulators.
Beaudo said workers made good progress Wednesday in its cleanup.
"We returned several locations on both east and west to the grid, focusing as we said yesterday on life support systems and getting batteries recharged," he said.
Most of the electricity at Prudhoe Bay is generated by a natural gas-fired turbine that produces 168 megawatts of power. The generating station was never down. The system has 13 substations and miles of power lines.
Beaudo earlier in the week said storms have affected the power system at Prudhoe every three to four years.