Safety audit reveals irregularities on Statoil’s Johan Sverdrup

Norway’s offshore safety watchdog, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), has found several irregularities during an audit of Statoil’s two Johan Sverdrup platforms.

The PSA said on Monday that the audit was conducted on January 16 and 17.

The safety body added that the audit was conducted to ensure compliance with the regulatory requirements for barrier management and robust operations on the Johan Sverdrup drilling platform and riser platform.

The objective of the audit was to monitor Statoil’s management and follow-up of robust operation of the drilling and well systems and the electrical facilities on board as well as barriers and the safety strategy for technical, organisational and operational barrier elements in relation to the company’s and the authorities’ requirements, so as to reduce the likelihood of failures.

The PSA identified one non-compliance regarding the verification of performance requirements for operational and organizational barrier elements for operators.

The audit also found two improvement points relating to appropriate risk analyses and the design of emergency power system and non-conformity handling.

As for Johan Sverdrup, the project will be developed in several phases, and the PDO for phase 2 will be submitted to Norwegian authorities in the second half of 2018.

The development concept for Phase 1 of Johan Sverdrup establishes a field center consisting of four platforms on the field. Phase 2 builds on this infrastructure, adding another processing platform to the field center. Overall, this will result in a processing capacity of 660,000 barrels of oil per day.