A flare that had threatened to cause an explosion at a North Sea platform leaking flammable gas has gone out, French oil giant Total said yesterday.

“We can confirm that the flare has been extinguished,” spokesman Brian O’Neill told AFP from the company’s crisis centre in Aberdeen, 240 kilometres from the offshore Elgin platform evacuated last week.

“It extinguished itself, which is what we expected to happen.”

There had been fears that the plume of gas, which continues to leak from the platform at a rate of an estimated 200,000 cubic metres per day, could come into contact with the naked flame and ignite, causing a massive explosion.

Total, which has seen around €8 billion wiped off its stock value since the last of Elgin’s 238 crew were evacuated last Monday, has described the accident as its worst problem in the North Sea in a decade.

O’Neill said a surveillance flight on Friday gave the first indications the flame had gone out, and yesterday morning the company’s boats confirmed it had not burned all night.

Total is preparing to sink two relief wells to stop the gas leak, which was first spotted last Sunday, in parallel with a plugging operation to pump so-called “heavy mud” into the stricken well at high pressure.

The company is moving two drilling rigs from elsewhere in the North Sea to drill the relief wells.

“Once they’re there, we’ll have to do preliminary work before we start drilling, such as surveys to assess the seabed,” O’Neill said.