PSA serves safety orders to Point Resources, Halliburton

Offshore staff

OSLO, Norway – The Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) has notified Point Resources and Halliburton of an order in connection with its investigation of a lifting incident involving a falling object on the Jotun B platform in the North Sea on May 19.

This occurred during lifting of a drilling riser weighing 15 metric tons (16.5 tons). No one was harmed during the incident.

PSA’s team, which visited the facility from May 24-27 and then held follow-up meetings onshore, identified serious deficiencies in systems and processes associated with the modular drilling facility:

• Lack of compliance with requirements in the maintenance provisions of the Activities Regulations.
• Barriers for functions related to the handling of the lift not defined or classified.
• Lifting functions and lifting equipment lacked performance requirements.
• Both companies could not produce documentation of how the lifting equipment involved in the incident had been re-categorized from lifting equipment to drilling-related equipment.
• No apparent assignment of technical and operational responsibility for maintenance of the lifting equipment.
• Personnel involved in the incident lacked adequate training in the lifting equipment employed.

Point Resources and Halliburton have now been ordered to respond with various measures, including a systematic mapping of barrier functions for lifting in the drilling module. Deadline for compliance is Aug. 10.

The PSA has also told Aker BP to obtain its consent before using a walk-to-work (W2W) vessel for accommodation of maintenance personnel alongside the normally unmanned Tambar platform in the North Sea.

The application must include a description of the vessel’s design and systems for stability and positioning; outline how transport routes (gangways and possible cranes) between facility and vessel are designed to ensure that material handling and personnel traffic can take place in an efficient and prudent manner; detail results of an analysis of working environment conditions for personnel executing work on Tambar, including when they are on the vessel.

07/06/2018