Repsol tasked with addressing nonconformities on jack-up rig

Norwegian offshore safety regulator has carried out an audit of information security for the industrial ICT systems and maintenance of the alarm management systems on a jack-up rig, currently working for Repsol off Norway, and is awaiting a response from the firm regarding the way the identified nonconformities will be handled.

The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) disclosed last week that the objective of the audit was to verify processes and systems used by Repsol to ensure the follow-up of industrial ICT systems and the implementation of this in respect of individual systems.

In addition, the regulator wanted to verify the correspondence between overarching procedures and the follow-up of the systems on the Yme Inspirer jack-up rig.

While conducting its investigation, the PSA identified several breaches of the regulations. The offshore safety watchdog explains that some of the observations in this audit are exempt from public disclosure, with reference to the Freedom of Information Act. Due to this, they are not shown under nonconformities in the audit report. 

As the PSA’s investigation was completed, the regulator asked Repsol to report how the nonconformities will be addressed by 29 March 2023.

In 2021, Maersk Drilling decided to sell its Maersk Inspirer jack-up rig to Havila, which would, in turn, lease and sell the rig to the Yme field licence, operated by Repsol, for a price tag of $373 million. As a result, Repsol took over the day-to-day operations of the jack-up rig on behalf of the Yme licence.

The Yme field, which is located in Block 9/2 and 9/5 in the Egersund Basin approximately 130 kilometres from the Norwegian coastline, was discovered in 1987. However, it did not start production until 1996. Back in 2001, production ceased because the operation of the field was no longer regarded as profitable.

Repsol took over the project in 2015 and submitted a revised PDO for the field in December 2017, which was approved in March 2018. After years of delays, the Yme field started producing again in late October 2021.