The audit was conducted from 3 September 2019 to 10 January 2020.

Objective

The objective of the audit was to verify that Equinor’s management and follow-up of barriers at Oseberg C comply with the company’s and the authorities’ requirements. This entails knowing which barriers have been established and which function they are to fulfil, as well as which performance requirements are necessary to make the individual barrier effective. We wanted to monitor that, at all levels of the organisation, Equinor is working systematically on prioritising, planning and undertaking activities to prevent major accidents. The audit focused on management’s efforts to address major accident risk on the facility.

In the audit, we monitored who (organisational barrier elements) did what (operational barrier elements) using which equipment (technical barrier elements) in order to detect and address failure, hazard and accident situations that may arise at Oseberg C.

Result

Two non-conformities were identified during the audit:

  • Capacity and competence deficiencies
  • Deficiencies in the notification and follow-up of the well incident of 28 February 2019

We also identified six improvement points in the following areas:

  • Better barrier management
  • Deficiencies in the follow-up of operational and organisational barrier elements
  • Better alarm handling in a failure, hazard and accident situation
  • Collision with supply vessel
  • Better follow-up of temporary equipment
  • Better maintenance of lighting fixtures

Follow-up of previous audits

In the audit, we also investigated whether previously identified non-conformities had been addressed in accordance with the company’s responses.

We found that the following non-conformity in the audit of barrier management and maintenance had been addressed in line with the company’s written feedback of 28 January 2015 and 21 May 2015:

  • Non-conformity relating to escape routes from rooms for high-voltage installations from chapter 5.1.2 of the report following the audit of 13 February 2015, our journal entry 2014/888.

We found that the following non-conformity in the audit of working environment conditions at Oseberg C had been addressed in line with the company’s written feedback:

  • Non-conformity relating to lack of register of employees exposed to chemicals from chapter 5.1.2 of the report following the audit of 21 April 2015, our journal entry 2015/99, and reply of 29 May 2015 and information from meeting of 29 October 2015.

We found that the following non-conformities in the audit of barrier management and maintenance had been addressed in line with the company’s written feedback of 28 January 2015 and 21 May 2015, but further observations were made during this audit:

  • Non-conformity relating to risk management from chapter 5.1.1 of the report following the audit of 13 February 2015, our journal entry 2014/888. See our observation in chapter 5.2.1 (h).
  • Non-conformity relating to documentation from chapter 5.1.3 of the report following the audit of 13 February 2015, our journal entry 2014/888. See our observation in chapter 5.1.1.

What happens now?

We have asked Equinor for a report on how the non-conformities will be addressed. We have also asked the company for their assessment of the improvement points observed.

The deadline for this is set at 25 May 2020.