Offshore watchdog finds safety flaws on Equinor’s Troll C platform

Norwegian offshore safety watchdog, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), has found a number of non-conformities and improvement points during an audit of Equinor’s Troll C platform located offshore Norway. 

Troll C platform. Credit - Øyvind Hagen - Equinor

The safety regulator said on Thursday it had carried out an audit of Equinor and technical safety on Troll C between 15 and 19 October 2018.

The objective of the audit was to investigate how Equinor is ensuring compliance with the authorities’ requirements and how barriers within technical safety, process safety and electrical facilities are managed on Troll C.

According to the regulator, six non-conformities were identified, relating to follow-up and overview of passive fire protection; lighting in the emergency hospital and back-up emergency hospital; automatic actions in the event of gas detection; electrotechnical system analyses; high-voltage equipment warning signs; and, monitoring and control.

In addition, four improvement points were identified in connection with storage and follow-up of safety equipment in switchrooms; work on electrical facilities; knowledge and updating of operating documentation; and, start-up of fire pumps in the event of gas detection.

Equinor has been given a deadline of January 25, 2019, to report on how the non-conformities and improvement points will be addressed.

The Troll field lies in the northern part of the North Sea, around 65 kilometres west of Kollsnes, near Bergen.

Equinor operates the Troll A, B, and C platforms and the landfall pipelines, while Gassco is operator for the gas processing plant at Kollsnes on behalf of Gassled. Equinor is technical service provider for Kollsnes operations.