Engine problem pulls down Hibernia production

Safety officials are investigating an incident aboard the platform at the Hibernia oil field that affected production.

No one was injured during a backfire in a generating engine aboard the fixed platform, about 315 kilometres southeast of St. John's.

Public affairs manager Margot Bruce-O'Connell said the incident, however, did affect production at the Hibernia, the first of three fields on the Grand Banks now pumping oil.

"It impacted our generator, which did reduce our production, so we have a team out now working on repairing the generator," Bruce-O'Connell said.

Hibernia will not comment on how much the incident affected production levels. However, production has dropped enough that some non-essential members of the platform's 185-member crew have been flown back to land.

There are no details yet on what may have caused the backfire, which happened Tuesday.