Johan Sverdrup FEED phase under PSA’s spotlight

The Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) Norway has carried out an audit of materials handling, occupational health and safety and barrier management in the development project for the Johan Sverdrup field, in the North Sea. 

Johan Sverdrup is an oil and gas field in the central North Sea, around 140 kilometres west of Stavanger. According to the PSA, the field was proven in 2010, and the estimated recoverable resources make Johan Sverdrup one on the five largest fields discovered on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

The field comprises production licences 501, 501 B, 265 and 502. Lundin Norway AS is the operator of the first two of these and Statoil Petroleum AS of the other two. The PSA says that the licensees of these production licences have agreed to recommend that Statoil becomes the operator for all the field’s phases. The plan for development and operation (PDO) for phase 1 is scheduled to be submitted in February 2015. Production on the field is scheduled to start in 2019.

Johan Sverdrup FEED

On 18 and 19 November 2014, the PSA carried out an audit of Statoil’s management of the front-end engineering design (FEED) phase. The audit was conducted at Aker Engineering & Technology in London, who are undertaking the FEED on behalf of the licensees. The audit was focused on the areas of materials handling, occupational health and safety, and barrier management.

During the audit, observations were made relating to: Design and placement of wellhead facility; Use of risk analyses; Barrier management; Working environment factors and employee participation; Lifting operations.

The PSA says it will monitor that Statoil takes account of the observed conditions in future work on the FEED with a view to ensuring that regulatory requirements in these areas are satisfied in the selected solutions.

[mappress mapid=”927″]