LONDON (ShareCast) - French oil company Total's share price plunged 6% on Tuesday as the gas leak at one of its rigs in the North Sea continued in what has become a situation reminiscent of BP’s Gulf of Mexico spill last year.

The French oil company is now concentrating all its focus on putting a stop to the gas leak at the Elgin field platform. Among the possibilities would be to call on Transocean and Rowan to perform emergency drilling to stop up the leak, although the operation would take time. A group of international experts has already traveled to the area to study the issue.

So far there have been no victims thanks to the immediate evacuation of the all crews on Sunday.

BP takes cover

BP has no desire to relive the Macondo Oil catastrophe and thus took immediate action to protect Forties Pipeline Systems, the key element to its North Sea infrastructure that transports oil to more than 50 offshore rigs.

Adding to Tuesday’s losses, Total was the second biggest decliner on the CAC40 early on Wednesday as it traded down 2.46% to €37.61. Only Technip fell more on the French benchmark (-2.66% to €83.36) despite having said yesterday that it did not design the platform that is leaking gas. In the meantime, BP slipped only 0.21% to 470.35p.

However, the Oil & Gas sector took a dive in Europe and was the second biggest decliner early on Wednesday as the sector drops 1.28%.

SB/JM

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