Back to overview
Home Fossil Energy Safety body finds irregularities during ‘Safe Scandinavia’ audit

Safety body finds irregularities during ‘Safe Scandinavia’ audit

June 5, 2018

The Norwegian offshore safety body, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), has found non-conformities and improvement points during an audit of Prosafe’s semi-submersible vessel Safe Scandinavia.

Safe Scandinavia; Source: Prosafe©

The PSA said on Tuesday that it carried out an audit of both Prosafe and Equinor which focused on the management of emergency preparedness, logistics, the working environment, and employee participation on the tender support vessel (TSV) Safe Scandinavia.

According to the safety watchdog, the audit of Prosafe and Equinor, then called Statoil, was conducted in April 2018. The PSA added that it identified a number of non-conformities and improvement points.

The objective of the audit was to follow-up previous audits of Prosafe and Safe Scandinavia, orders relating to the identification and follow-up of non-conformities, Equinor’s supervisory activities, whistleblowing reports, and incident follow-up.

The PSA told Prosafe to report by June 25 on how the non-conformities would be addressed, and for their assessment of the improvement points identified.

The Safe Scandinavia has been working for Equinor since March 2016 when it mobilized to the Oseberg Øst installation in the North Sea to start drilling support operations.

To remind, the vessel was a matter of dispute between Prosafe and Westcon Yards, the company which converted the Safe Scandinavia into a tender support vessel.

The conversion project experienced delays which also delayed the contract start with Equinor. Prosafe claimed that the conversion of the vessel experienced a substantial cost overrun compared to the price estimate given by Westcon when the two entered into the contract.

In early March, the Stavanger City Court gave judgment in favor of Prosafe and decided that Westcon must repay Prosafe NOK 344 million plus interest and NOK 10.6 million legal costs.

Westcon then in April filed an appeal against the Stavanger City Court’s decision which was followed by a counter-appeal by Prosafe in May.