West Venture semi-sub in PSA probe

From 29 September to 2 October 2014, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) Norway carried out an audit of Statoil within the domains of emergency preparedness, drilling and well technology on the West Venture semi-submersible drilling rig.

West Venture is operated by North Atlantic Drilling (NAD) and works for Statoil on the Troll field, located in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea.

Background
In the spring of 2014, the PSA performed a survey of all drilling contractors with activities involving mobile facilities on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The PSA says that the purpose of the audit was to map competence requirements in drilling and to verify each individual company’ compliance with the competence requirements. For resource reasons, the PSA opted to combine follow-up of the survey with the ordinary audit activities for emergency preparedness, and drilling and well technology. According to the PSA, the audit was planned as part of the PSA’s strategy for auditing petroleum activity participants, focused on major accident risk.

Objective
The objective of the audit, as concerns emergency preparedness, was to verify the rig’s emergency preparedness organisation, equipment and systems for providing emergency preparedness functions.

For the drilling domain, the verifications focused on systems, equipment and procedures relating to drilling operations. The audit also included verification of the company’s requirements for expertise for employment in the drilling domain, the PSA says.

Result
The PSA reports that a total of 4 non-conformities and 9 improvement points were identified during the audit.

Image: PSA

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