BP partially shuts down oil field

BP officials said it was too early to determine what caused a water-pipe leak that led to the second partial shutdown in 10 months of the nation's largest producing oil field.
"The best estimate is that it's going to be a few days where we are going through a repair plan," BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said Tuesday. "We will work as quickly and as safely as we can."
Production at Alaska's Prudhoe Bay was cut by one fourth after the company discovered the leak early Monday morning, company officials said.
Some 400,000 barrels a day of oil are pumped at Prudhoe Bay, about half of the total North Slope production.
Beaudo said the company discovered a hole about the size of a pencil's diameter to a water line in a facility used to separate oil, water and natural gas.
BP discovered the leak around 1:45 a.m. Tuesday, Beaudo said. By the time work crews diverted the leak to proper drainage and placed a patch over the leak, about 20 barrels of water had escaped from the pipe.
BP is Prudhoe Bay's operator, and it has a 25 percent stake in the field it shares largely with ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil, which hold 36 percent interest each.
The British company said its production loss would be 25,000 barrels per day; losses for the two majority owners would be about 36,000 barrels a day each.
The facility where the water leak occurred is the same one where the largest-ever oil leak on the North Slope occurred, last year.