Faults found during barrier management audit at Eldfisk B

Norwegian offshore safety watchdog, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), has found irregularities during an audit of ConocoPhillips’ management of technical barriers on the Eldfisk B platform off Norway. 

The PSA said on Friday that the audit was conducted from November 23 to December 14, 2017.

The objective of the audit was to assess how ConocoPhillips is ensuring compliance with the authorities’ and its own requirements within barrier management for the operation and maintenance of Eldfisk B within the disciplines of electrical facilities, technical safety, ventilation, and process safety.

The audit identified non-conformities associated with non-conformity handling, work descriptions for function testing, testing of the firewater system, firewalls, and documentation.

In addition, an improvement point was found relating to the performance requirements of PSD valves.

The PSA told ConocoPhillips to report by March 5 on how the non-conformities would be addressed, and for an assessment of the area with potential for improvement.

Eldfisk B is a combined drilling, wellhead, and processing platform on the Eldfisk oil field, which lies south of Ekofisk in the southern part of the Norwegian sector of the North Sea.

ConocoPhillips is the operator of Eldfisk which was discovered in 1970 while production began in 1979.

The first development comprised three platforms with steel jackets, Eldfisk 2/7-A, 2/7-B and 2/7-FTP. Two platforms were subsequently added to the field.