ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Half the oil production on Alaska's North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered severe corrosion and a small spill from a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line.
BP officials said they didn't know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off line. "I don't even know how long it's going to take to shut it down," said Tom Williams, BP's senior tax and royalty counsel.
Once the field is shut down, in a process expected to take day, BP said oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day. That's close to 8 percent of U.S. oil production as of May 2006, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
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