BP Expects to Resume Exports From Plutonio in October

By Eduard Gismatullin

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc, Europe's second-biggest oil company, expects to resume exports from its Greater Plutonio oil fields in Angola in October following a shutdown last month.

It's ``completely shut'' and there is no oil loading, Robert Wine, a London-based spokesman at BP, said by phone today.

Nobody was injured when gas equipment had a malfunction on the fields' floating, production, storage and offloading vessel on Aug. 16. He declined to say when production would start.

The vessel can process as much as 240,000 barrels of crude a day and 400 million standard cubic feet of natural gas, according to BP. The company started pumping from the Greater Plutonio in October last year.

Great Plutonio is one of the projects BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward is relying on to maintain and increase production. BP and partners have started pumping oil and gas at Angola's Kizomba C field along with exports from the Atlantis platform in the Gulf of Mexico in the past 11 months. BP plans to have four wells open at the long-delayed Thunder Horse field in the U.S. Gulf by the end of the year.

``They had this trip with the gas plant and they've been investigating it, working on what fixes are required,'' Wine said. ``It'll be down for as long as it needs to be to fix it safely.''

The Greater Plutonio fields -- Galio, Cromio, Paladio, Plutonio, Cobalto and Platina -- were discovered from 1999 to 2001 and are located in water 1,200 meters (3,950 feet) to 1,450 meters deep off Angola's coast.

Greater Plutonio is located in Angola's block 18. BP holds a 50 percent stake in the project. The rest is held by Sonangol Sinopec International, a joint venture between Angola's state oil company and China's biggest refiner.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eduard Gismatullin in London at egismatullin@bloomberg.net