Norwegian oil and gas safety body, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), has found two non-conformities and two improvement points during a late life safety probe of Statoil’s Statfjord platforms.
Statfjord lies close to the boundary line between the Norwegian and UK continental shelves in the Tampen area in the North Sea. The field has been developed using three integrated production, drilling and accommodation platforms with concrete jackets.
The Statfjord A, B, and C platforms came on stream in 1979, 1982, and 1985 respectively. All three platforms had an original design life of 30 years and received consent for extended use.
The PSA said on Tuesday that the audit identified non-conformities relating to benzene exposure and the firefighting system for slug catchers for stacks.
Also, improvement points were detected in connection with barrier understanding and noise exposure.
The safety body conducted the audit on January 25 and 26 to see how Statoil is following up the preconditions defined for the applications for extended lifetimes for the platforms. The PSA added that the audit took place in the form of meetings at Statoil’s premises at Forus.
PSA told Statoil to report on how the non-conformities will be dealt with and how the improvement points will be assessed by April 27, 2017, at the latest.
Statfjord A platform was investigated by the PSA back in October 2016 after a fire broke out on the platform. A month before the incident, Statfjord delivered its five-billionth barrel of oil equivalent since first oil in 1979.