PSA Norway Launches List of Knarr FPSO Irregularities

From 11 to 14 June 2013, the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) carried out an audit of Teekay Petrojarl (TKPJ) and the company’s design and building of Knarr FPSO.

The activity concerned the areas of working environment and logistics (materials handling, cranes, lifting appliances and lifting equipment).

The objective of the audit was to verify that equipment packages and individual areas were designed with a view to safeguarding sound future working-environment and logistics conditions on the facility, including ensuring that the project has established appropriate management systems and management tools for following up working-environment and logistics conditions during ongoing manufacture and mechanical completion of the facility.

Results

Non-conformities were identified in connection with:

Follow-up and updating of individual project documents

Performance requirements of alarm systems

Noise requirements

Organisational and staffing studies

Follow-up of observations after inspections

Ergonomic conditions in cabins

Materials handling approaches

Carrying out of crane studies

Improvement points were identified in connection with:

Requirements for number of air exchanges per hour

Updating of the working environment programme

Resource in the project’s operation organisation within lifting equipment and materials handling

Materials handling

Requirements for lifting equipment and performance of lifting equipment conformity checks

Design of loading deck

Thresholds

Lifting beams

Loose hatches

Knarr

The Knarr field (previously known as Jordbaer) is located in the northern part of the North Sea, about 120 kilometres west of Florø. The field will be developed with seabed facilities tied in to a floating production facility (FPSO).

The FPSO unit, which will have a maximum design production capacity of 63,000 barrels per day (bbls/d), is scheduled to deliver during the first quarter of 2014, at which time it will commence operations under its charter contract with BG for a firm period of either six or ten years plus extension options for a total period of up to 20 years. Under the terms of the agreement, BG has until the end of 2012 to decide on the firm period of the charter contract.

TKPJ will own and operate the facility, which requires an application for an Acknowledgement of Compliance (AoC) to the PSA.