MOL Norge (MOL) has applied for consent by the Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority for exploration drilling of well 2/6-6 S in the North Sea. This is the company’s first own-operated well on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. As part of the consent application processing, PSA Norway carried out an audit of MOL’s planning of the drilling operation. The audit was conducted on 20 June 2018.
The objective of the audit was to verify the company’s robustness in respect of the management of health, safety and the environment in the planning and preparation for the drilling of exploration well 2/6-6 S. No non-conformities were identified during the audit, but one improvement point concerning internal requirements was observed.
Requirements relating to the management of health, safety and the environment, with reference to section 6 of the Management Regulations concerning the management of health, safety and the environment and section 17 of the Framework Regulations concerning the duty to establish, follow up and further develop the company’s management system, were followed up during the audit, together with verification that the management of HSE is adequately provided for by the company.
In addition, the company had to show that it has robustness and safety margins that enable it to handle unforeseen incidents during the execution of exploration drilling.
We have asked MOL to give us their assessment of the improvement point by 30 October 2018.
The Authority has carried out another audit on MOL Norge and site-specific analyses of load-bearing structures and identified some improvement points including erosion around the legs, low collision frequencies of visiting ships, wave crest height and missing assessments of seismic loads.
