Norwegian offshore safety body, the Petroleum Safety Authority, has found several improvement points during an audit of Teekay Petrojarl Production and its maintenance management of the Petrojarl Knarr FPSO.
The Knarr field, operated by Shell, is in the northern sector of the North Sea, around 50 kilometers north-east of Snorre. Knarr has been developed using a production and storage vessel (FPSO), the Petrojarl Knarr, and subsea wells.
Oil is loaded from the Knarr FPSO into tankers, while the gas is exported by pipeline to St. Fergus in the UK. Production from the field began in 2015. The FPSO has a production capacity of 63,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and a storage capacity of 800,000 barrels.
Although Shell is the operator of the Knarr field, Teekay owns and operates the Petrojarl Knarr FPSO on behalf of the licensees.
The PSA said on Thursday that the audit did not identify any regulatory non-conformities, but it did find three areas with potential for improvement.
Namely, the improvement points were in regard to barriers, nonconformity handling, and environmental risk reduction.
The safety regulator added that the audit was carried out from June 2-15 and that it focused on the company’s management of maintenance of Petrojarl Knarr.
The object was to evaluate how Teekay is ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and its own requirements in respect of maintenance including condition monitoring and inspection of the FPSO.
The PSA asked Teekay to report on how the company plans to assess these factors by September 15.