• Factory gas cloud causes stink from Paris to London

    There wasn't just a chill in the air along England's Kent coast at dawn. There was also a rather strange smell. Dozens of people called the fire brigade to report a gas leak. They were not far wrong, though the source of the smell was far away, as Damon Green of ITV News reports.

    By The Associated Press

    A foul-smelling cloud of gas escaped from a factory in northern France on Tuesday, making life unpleasant from the outskirts of Paris to Britain's shores and prompting scores of emergency calls.

    France's Interior Ministry released a statement saying the mercaptan gas escaping from the Rouen chemical factory is harmless. Among other uses, mercaptan is added to otherwise odorless municipal gas to alert people of leaks. The factory has been shut down, and environmental authorities are carrying out tests.

    While authorities reassured residents no to worry, winds carried the smell across hundreds of square miles.

    Police in the coastal English town of Hastings reassured residents in a tweet with the hashtag "noneedtopanic" that mercaptan from Rouen was the likely cause of the odor.

    The London Fire Brigade tweeted that it had received five times as many calls about potential gas leaks before 10:30 Tuesday morning than it had taken all of the day before. The response? Hashtag "mondieu."

    The factory in the northern city of Rouen is owned by Lubrizol, a subsidiary of investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

    "Bearing in mind the lack of danger, residents of the areas concerned are asked not to call emergency services," the Interior Ministry said.

    Charly Triballeau / AFP - Getty Images

    A gas leak at this chemical plant in the Normandy city of Rouen could be smelled as far away as Paris and London. Officials say it is harmless.

    The local government posted a message on its website, asking people not to call emergency services and instead set up a hotline to answer questions about the smell.

    Pierre-Jean Payrouse, the director of internal operations for the factory, said he hoped the leak would be stopped by Tuesday evening.

    But not in time for a French Cup soccer game scheduled for the evening; authorities postponed the Marseille-Rouen match.

    © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • Gas flare on leaking North Sea drilling platform extinguished

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    LONDON -- A flare near Total's Elgin drilling platform has gone out, reducing the threat of explosion at a massive gas leak from a North Sea well, the company's chief executive said on Saturday.

    "The flare on the Elgin platform was extinguished last night,'' Christophe de Margerie wrote on Total's Twitter account.

    A spokesman confirmed the tweet, saying the flame had gone out by itself without technical intervention.   

    The flare had been lit as part of Total's response to a gas leak at the Elgin drilling platform off Scotland's east coast, to relieve pressure in the well.

    "We received the first indication that the flare may be out at 12:07 (7:07 p.m. ET Thursday) yesterday from our first surveillance of the day," a spokesman told the BBC.

    "The news was then reaffirmed at 16:36 (11:36 a.m. ET) following our second flight of the day. We received what we consider final confirmation at 8:20 (3:20 a.m. ET) this morning, when our sea vessels on location reported no further flare activity through the night."

    Located about 110 yards away from the rig, it raised fears of a massive explosion were it to ignite the natural gas that has been leaking below the platform for six days.

    Oil company says it has found source of gas leak off Scottish coast

    While Total had dismissed the risk of a blast, one engineering consultant warned that Elgin could become "an explosion waiting to happen''.

    Options to extinguish the flare had included dropping water from a helicopter or spraying nitrogen overhead to starve the flame of oxygen. In the end, the flare went out by itself.

    Highly explosive gas cloud
    The leak, which began on Sunday, is spewing an estimated 200,000 cubic metres of natural gas into the air per day, forming a highly explosive gas cloud around the platform.

    It began after pressure rose in a well that had earlier been capped.

    French energy company Total says natural gas is still escaping from its Elgin North Sea platform. They are preparing to drill relief wells to help bring the situation under control, but that could take months. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.

    A team of international experts is advising on how to plug the leak and Total said on Friday it would drill two relief wells, a process that could take six months and cost up to $3 billion.

    Total evacuated its 238 platform workers, and set up a two-mile exclusion zone for safety reasons, with fire-fighting ships on standby.

    North Sea exclusion zone set as gas surges from leak

    A senior union official said on Friday that Total had repeatedly assured workers a leak was impossible until just hours before evacuating them.

    Msnbc.com staff and Reuters contributed to this report.

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