A North Sea oil platform was briefly evacuated today and about 5,000 barrels per day of crude output shut down after a fire broke out on board.
Ninety of the 159 people on board the Thistle Alpha were evacuated. They were able to return to the rig after the blaze was extinguished. There were no casualties.
Rig operator Petrofac stopped output of Brent crude from the platform, a company spokesman said. Petrofac operates Thistle Alpha on behalf of Swedish company Lundin.
Exports of Brent were unlikely to be affected by the outage due to the small amount of oil involved, a shipping source said earlier. Output from Thistle Alpha is a fraction of total Brent crude output of around 200,000 bpd.
A spokeswoman for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said: "We were notified of the fire at 8.30am this morning.
"The platform was inspected in May 2007, again in November and another meeting is scheduled in December. As is agreed with the HSE, one generator is always available to provide emergency lighting and fire water.
"At this time the fire is out, there are no injuries and the platform is being remanned."
Seven rescue helicopters were originally sent to the scene after smoke and flames were seen on the platform, 120 miles (190 km) northeast of Shetland in Scotland.