Safety officials are investigating an incident aboard the platform at the Hibernia oil field that affected production.

No one was injured during a backfire in a generating engine aboard the fixed platform, about 315 kilometres southeast of St. John's.

Production at the Hibernia platform has been hindered because of a generator problem.
(CBC)

Public affairs manager Margot Bruce-O'Connell said the incident, however, did affect production at the Hibernia, the first of three fields on the Grand Banks now pumping oil.

"It impacted our generator, which did … reduce our production, so we have a team out now working on repairing the generator," Bruce-O'Connell said.

Hibernia will not comment on how much the incident affected production levels. However, production has dropped enough that some non-essential members of the platform's 185-member crew have been flown back to land.

There are no details yet on what may have caused the backfire, which happened Tuesday.