Safety body looks into Statoil’s Valemon control room solution

Norway’s offshore safety body, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), has found several improvement points during an audit of Statoil’s new control room solution for the Valemon platform in the North Sea.

The PSA said on Monday that even though no non-conformities were found, the safety authority identified four improvement points.

Namely, improvement points are related to robustness in the emergency preparedness organization, a system for transfer of information when changing shifts and crews, visibility conditions at the workstations in the control room, and evaluation of control measures and discussion of significant changes to control measures with employee representatives.

The Valemon field was developed using a fixed steel-jacketed production platform. Water depth at the site is 135 meters. Oil and condensate are piped to other facilities in the area.

The probe focused on Statoil’s planning of a new control room solution for Valemon which will be periodically unmanned and managed from a control room onshore.

The agency added that the audit took place on March 28, 2017, at Statoil’s premises at Sandsli in Bergen and follows up previous supervision of Statoil’s on the new Valemon control room.

The safety regulator also said that the object of the audit was to verify that the implementation of the chosen solution, which involves a control room at Sandsli and platform management at the Kvitebjørn facility, would be prudent and in compliance with the regulatory requirements.

The PSA told Statoil to report on how these improvement points would be assessed by June 15, at the latest.