An oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last week could be the largest in the US since BP's Macondo well accident that claimed 11 lives and sank the Deepwater Horizon rig in 2010.
LLOG Exploration Co's Delta House floating production facility, which is located 64 kilometres southeast of Venice, Louisiana, released between 7,950 and 9,350 barrels of oil from early Wednesday to Thursday morning,
The LLOG spill was triggered by a fracture in a flowline jumper – a short pipeline used to connect nearby subsea structures.
The company's vice president for deepwater projects, Rick Fowler, said multiple barriers placed on either side of the fracture stopped the release, but the flowline jumper hadn't been repaired yet.
The US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has started a five-member panel investigation into the cause of the spill.
LLOG has told BSEE there was no recoverable oil on the surface, but skimming vessels sourced from Clean Gulf Associates and Marine Spill Response Corporation were prepared to respond.
There are no reports of personnel injuries or shoreline impacts.
The Delta House platform, floating in 1,371 metres of water, came online in April 2015 with peak daily capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil and 6.8 million cubic metres of national gas.
Oil production has dropped to 57,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day from more than 90,000 before the spill, he said.
