Total: "may take SIX Months" to stop North Sea gas cloud

Reuters) - A cloud of explosive natural gas boiling out of the North Sea from a leak at Total's abandoned Elgin platform forced wider evacuations off the Scottish coast on Tuesday as the French firm warned it may take six months to halt the flow.

Dubbed "the well from hell" by a Norwegian environmentalist who said the high pressure of the undersea reservoirs in the field made it especially hard to shut off, a plume of gas was visible over the platform, officials said, and a sheen of oil, also produced from the rig, was spreading over the water.

Officials imposed an air and sea exclusion zone around the platform, which had been pumping 9 million cubic meters of gas per day or three percent of Britain's natural gas output and lies some 150 miles east of the city of Aberdeen.

A senior Total manager said the firm was looking at two main options - drilling a relief well, which could take six months, or the faster - potentially riskier - alternative of sending in engineers to "kill" the leak affecting a platform that also accounts for some 5.5 percent of Britain's total oil production.

But, Total manager David Hainsworth added: "The well itself could die on its own. This is the dream option." Read More