RIO DE JANEIRO, (Reuters) – U.S. oil company Chevron promised to fully clean-up a spill off Brazil’s coast, the CEO of the local subsidiary, George Buck, said on Sunday, taking responsibility for an accident that has become a major test for one of the world’s fastest-growing oil frontiers. The leak from the undersea well, owned in partnership with Brazil’s state-controlled Petrobras and a Japanese consortium, has been plugged and the residual oil flow from undersea rock is now “more than 10 barrels,” but “less than hundreds of barrels” per day, Buck said.
“Chevron takes full responsibility for this incident,” Buck told reporters in Rio de Janeiro. “We will share the lessons learned here in the hope that this sort of incident won’t happen again in Brazil or anywhere else in the world.”
The spill, one of the largest to hit Brazil’s growing offshore oil industry has raised questions about its safety and ability to respond to accidents. Oil companies in Brazil are testing the limits of drilling as they seek oil at depths as much as 7 kilometers (4.4 miles) below the ocean surface, putting equipment and people under strains often compared with those for space flight.
The stakes are large. Brazilian oil companies expect to produce about 7 million barrels of oil per day by 2020, most of offshore near Rio de Janeiro, an amount that would make Brazil the third largest oil producer after Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Opposition to offshore drilling is growing worldwide in the wake of the estimated 4 million barrel BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Brazil’s Federal Police are probing the spill for possible criminal action.
