Offshore staff
LONDON – Salamander Energy has shut in production from the Bualuang oil field in the Gulf of Thailand following damage to a production riser.
The incident occurred during bad weather, when the field’s FPSORubicon Vantage drifted into the exclusion zone designed to protect the production infrastructure.
Its mooring chains then struck the riser, with a small volume of oil subsequently observed on the sea surface. Operations were stopped to clean up the discharge, estimated at around 20 bbl. All the oil was dispersed within five hours.
Additional inspection and repairs are under way. A new production riser will be fitted if necessary, with production likely to re-start around Jan. 25.
Salamander stressed that the present development drilling campaign is not impacted, and theAtwood Mako is currently drilling the BB-02H well from the Bualuang Bravo platform.
The company will speed up planned maintenance and has rescheduled some hookup work on recently installed process modules.
The new FSO to be installed later this year will have a turret mooring system with 360° swivel capability, with no need for an exclusion zone. A similar incident is therefore unlikely to occur, the company said.
01/08/2014
