Another setback for Eni’s Goliat project

The Eni-operated Goliat development project in the Barents Sea, offshore Norway, has hit yet another stumbling block.

Namely, the Norwegian oil industry’s safety watchdog, the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway, has slapped the oil company with notification of orders, following audit conducted on the Goliat FPSO in January.

The January audit was conducted as a follow-up to an audit carried out in June 2015 linked to logistics, material handling, lifting equipment, and employee participation on Goliat.

According to the PSA, its logistics audit on Goliat conducted in June 2015 revealed that many of the same circumstances, both technical and operational, which were identified during the previous audits, had still not been rectified.

The aim of the audit in January 2016, PSA says, was to assess whether the requirements laid down in the regulations concerning logistics and the requirements for employee participation were now being complied with.

Deficiencies

In a statement on Thursday, February 11, 2016, the safety body said that serious breaches of the regulations were identified during its audit in January.

The PSA has provided a separate document (PDF in Norwegian) providing a comprehensive list of deficiencies found during the audit, which inter alia, include the lack of training of the employees, unclear instructions to the employees, inadequate or missing lightning, use of the cargo deck not adequately prepared for lifting operations,

In its notification of order, PSA told Eni to, inter alia, conduct a coherent review of, complete and implement its management system for logistics, systematically review and map all areas and systems within logistics and assess compliance with requirements for materials handling and lighting.

The PSA said the deadline for Eni to comply with the orders is set at March 4, 2016.

The PSA also said it identified irregularities linked to the follow-up of loose lifting equipment and inspection and maintenance of wire rope. Furthermore, an improvement point was identified in connection with offshore cranes.

Goliat arrived in Norway in April 2015 and was towed out to the field and installed in May/June. ENI then had consent, dated 20.4.2015, to use living quarters and the offshore cranes on the facility. This consent was granted in advance and is independent of the consent to use Goliat FPSO, which was given on 19.1.2016.

The PSA said it had carried out a number of logistics audits in 2012, 2014 and 2015. Non-conformities and improvement points were identified during all of these audits.

The Goliat

The Goliat field, dubbed the world’s northernmost offshore development, was originally planned for first oil in 2013, but it has yet to produce a single barrel of oil.

In August 2015, Eni Norge said the start of production was just „a few weeks“ away, but those few weeks have now spilled over into 2016.

The Goliat field, located 85 kilometers offshore Hammerfest, is being developed with a cylindrical floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit that arrived at the Goliat field location on May 7, 2015, after a short stop-over in the fjord outside Hammerfest. The Goliat FPSO was designed by the Norwegian company Sevan Marine in Arendal and built at the HHI yard in South Korea.

The field is estimated to hold about 174 million barrels of oil. The cost of the development had originally been set at $5.06 billion, but the figure has now surpassed the $6 billion mark.

Offshore Energy Today Staff