A gas leak at Petrobras' P-40 offshore oil platform in Brazil's Campos basin on Thursday has led to the preventive shutdown of production, the firm said in a statement on Thursday.
The platform, located in the Marlim Sul field, one of the firm's smaller sites, was under the management of a contingency crew due to a workers' strike that has entered its fourth day, union Sindipetro-NF said in a statement earlier on Thursday.
The state-run oil firm said the incident did not have anything to do with the strike. It did not say when production would resume.
Once the gas leak was detected, it was "immediately" controlled, the firm said, adding there was no threat to workers' safety and that production in other Campos basin units was proceeding normally.
The leak happened as the workers' strike has spread, forcing Petrobras to adopt contingency measures on a number of platforms, including at the country's highest-producing Buzios field in Santos basin, Adaedson Costa, the secretary general of local union FNP, told Reuters on Thursday.
The strike has also reached several refineries, four thermal plants and two biodiesel plants, FUP union said in a statement.
Petrobras is by far Brazil's biggest producer. In the third quarter the firm had output of about 2.52 million barrels of oil per day in the country.
It was unclear how many workers are actually on strike but unions have said the mobilization is strong, with workers willing to continue the strike through the end-of-year holidays.
Petrobras has said that the strike has had no impact on the production of oil or oil products, and that it has adopted contingency measures to ensure operational continuity.
Petrobras and its workers have been in a dispute over a deficit in the retirement fund and a push for changes to the employee compensation structure, among other issues.
(Reporting by Marta Nogueira and Fabio Teixeira; editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Kirsten Donovan and Nia Williams)