The Norwegian offshore safety body, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), has found five non-conformities during an audit of Statoil’s Norne field off Norway.
The PSA said on Wednesday that the audit was carried out on December 12 and 13, 2017.
The objective of the audit was to gain an overview of how Statoil operates subsea facilities and leak detection systems at Norne and to examine if operations comply with the company’s requirements and statutory regulations.
Norne is an oil and gas field in the Norwegian Sea located around 80 kilometers north of Heidrun. The field has been developed using a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel tied to seven well templates.
The offshore safety regulator added that the audit was conducted in collaboration with the Norwegian Environment Agency.
The PSA found five regulatory non-conformities during the audit regarding governing documents, risk and criticality assessments for preventing and detecting leaks, barriers, alarm management in the central control room, and maintenance management.
According to the agency, the background to the audit concerns previous incidents involving leaks from subsea facilities on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, the follow-up of incidents, experiences from the operation and maintenance of leak detection systems and assessments of barrier performance.
Statoil was told by the PSA to report on how the non-conformities would be addressed by February 21 at the latest.
It is worth mentioning that the Norne field celebrated its twentieth anniversary of production in early November last year .