Norway may shut more gas fields to avoid leak risks: regulator

Oslo (Platts)--9Feb2006

Norway may have to shut down more fields to avoid gas risk leaks, a
spokesman for the Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority said Thursday. Statoil
announced earlier Thursday a shut down on the Kvitebjorn and Heidrun fields to
repair the flare knock-out drums. A spokesman for the Norwegian Petroleum
Safety Authority said that the inspectorate could not exclude the potential
for more fields to be shut down for the same reasons.
     Statoil has reviewed all of its facilities to control the flare knock-out
drums as a result of the gas leak on the Visund platform on Jan 19. In a
letter to the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway on Feb 3, Statoil said it had
similar constructions on the Sleipner B and Kvitebjorn platforms in the North
Sea, on Heidrun in the Norwegian Sea, and at the gas processing complex at
Kollsnes near Bergen.
     A team of specialists at Statoil has made a detailed evaluation of the
design of Heidrun and Kvitebjorn and concluded that the flare knock-out drums
should be repaired. Production from Kvitebjorn was therefore stopped in the
evening of Feb 8 to remove the plates in the flare knock-out drums. This
operation is expected to take a few days. Production from Heidrun will be shut
down from the middle of next week.
     The specialist team is now assessing whether it will be necessary to
remove similar plates at Kollsnes and on the Sleipner B platform. A spokesman
for Statoil said they still did not know if it would be necessary to shut down
production at the gas terminal and the Sleipner field, but could not exclude
the option.
     The shortfall in production from Kvitebjorn will be just over 20-mil cu m
of gas, and about 60,000 barrels of condensate per day. The Heidrun field is
currently producing some 3-mil cu m of gas and about 140,000 barrels of oil
per day. The Visund field is also shut down as a result of the incident Jan 19
and unlikely to resume production during the first quarter. The daily loss of
output totals roughly 35,000 barrels of oil and about 5-mil cu m of export
gas. The shortfall in production has not affected Statoil's gas buyers.
     The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway has sent a letter to the industry
with information about the large gas leak on Visund on Jan 19 and informed all
the oil companies of the potentially dangerous conditions that had been
uncovered in connection with the discharge assembly in the KO drum for the
flare. The safety inspectorate asked the oil companies to investigate their
installations and report all findings. The ongoing investigation of the
incident on Visund is not complete.

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