Offshore safety watchdog finds room for improvement on Johan Sverdrup

Norwegian safety watchdog, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), has found improvement points during an audit of Statoil’s design engineering of the Johan Sverdrup riser platform.

PSA said on Friday that the audit was conducted during meetings with Statoil and Kværner in Oslo on May 2 and 3, 2016.

The purpose of the audit was to monitor Statoil’s follow-up of suppliers and verify that the project was being planned and executed in compliance with the regulatory requirements and recognized norms.

The audit resulted with no non-conformities found but the PSA identified two areas with potential for improvement related to non-conformity handling and verification activities.

To remind, Statoil marked the start of construction of the Johan Sverdrup riser platform at the Samsung Heavy Industries yard in South Korea on June 30.

Johan Sverdrup is an oil field located in the North Sea around 155 kilometers west of Karmøy in Rogaland county, offshore Norway. The riser platform is the largest of the four platforms constituting the Johan Sverdrup field center. The platform will be 124 meters long, 28 meters wide, 42 meters tall, and have a total weight of 23,000 tonnes.

The whole Johan Sverdrup development is to be powered from onshore when commissioned in 2019.

Statoil is the operator of the field with 40.0267%, and its partners are Lundin Norway with 22.6%, Petoro with 17.36%, Det norske oljeselskap with 11.5733% and Maersk Oil with 8.44% interest.