North Atlantic Drilling - West Venture - Emergency preparedness, drilling and well technology

West Venture is operated by North Atlantic Drilling (NAD) and works for Statoil on the Troll field.

Background

In the spring of 2014, the PSA performed a survey (our reference 2014/35) of all drilling contractors with activities involving mobile facilities on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. 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. 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 facility'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.

Result

A total of 4 non-conformities and 9 improvement points were identified during the audit.