Equinor picks up two safety consents for North Sea operations

Norwegian oil company Equinor has received two consents from the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) – one for the use of a COSL rig for exploration drilling and one for the use of Utgard field facilities in the North Sea off Norway. 

The PSA said on Monday that the first consent was for the use of the COSLPromoter drilling rig for exploration drilling in the North Sea.

The consent covers the drilling of eight production wells in connection with the development of Troll Phase 3 on the Troll field in the North Sea.

According to the safety body, the drilling is scheduled to begin in September 2019 and expected to last 144 days.

As for the rig, COSLPromoter is a semi-submersible drilling rig of the GM4000 type. The rig is owned and operated by COSL Drilling Europe and received an Acknowledgement of Compliance (AoC) from the PSA in 2012.

The Norwegian oil major has also received a consent to use certain facilities on the Utgard field.

Namely, the consent applies to the use of Utgard subsea facilities, pipelines, control cables, and associated modifications to Sleipner A and T.

The Utgard field is located in the central North Sea, straddling the sector boundary between Norway and the UK. It is located 20 kilometers west of the Sleipner field center in a water depth of 110-120 meters.

Utgard was discovered in 1982, and the plan for development and operation was approved in 2017. The development concept is a four-slot subsea template with two wells tied-back to the Sleipner T facility for processing and reduction of the CO2 level in the gas.

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