Norway: Safety Violations Found at Hammerfest LNG Terminal, PSA Says

From 12 – 15 June 2012, the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) carried out an audit activity related to application and use of risk analyses, and fire load and fire resistance in the process facility at Statoil’s Hammerfest LNG terminal, PSA said in a statement.

The objective was to verify that Hammerfest LNG safeguards the regulatory requirements related to barrier management.

Special emphasis was placed on:

• Application and use of updated risk analysis
• Fire load and fire resistance in the process facility on the barge
• Follow-up of implemented plans and measures following previously conducted audits

Result
A serious breach of the regulations was proven in relation to the depressurisation system’s performance.

Based on this, the PSA has notified Statoil of the following order:
Based on Section 69 of the Framework Regulations relating to administrative decisions, cf. Section 5 of the Management Regulations – relating to barriers, Section 41 of the Technical and Operational Regulations relating to use of onshore facilities, and Section 23 of the Framework Regulations relating to general requirements for material and information, Hammerfest LNG is ordered to submit a binding, scheduled and detailed plan that will ensure the design and performance of the depressurisation system is verified vis-à-vis  the system requirements, cf. Chapter 5.1.1 of the report. Measures that result in considerable risk reduction must be prioritised in the plan.

Until the conditions have been improved, compensating measures must be implemented pursuant to Section 22 of the Management Regulations. An overview of such measures must be sent to the PSA by the deadline stipulated below.

The deadline for complying with the order, including sending an overview of compensating measures, is set at 13 September 2012. We must be notified when the order has been complied with.

Other nonconformities
Furthermore, four other nonconformities were identified in relation to the regulations, within the following areas:

• Leak testing of emergency shutdown valves
• Internal spread risk in the event of fire in the process barge
• Designing against jet fire
• Active fire fighting

Five improvement items were also identified following the activity.

[mappress]

LNG World News Staff, August 20, 2012; Image: Statoil