On 25 July 2018, Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) carried out an audit of the follow-up of materials handling, cranes and lifting on ‘Martin Linge B’, the floating storage and offloading unit that was recently installed in North Sea. The audit detected non-conformities in the areas of procedures for cranes and lifting operations, completion of cranes and training.
The audit formed part of PSA Norway’s follow-up of the development project for the Martin Linge field. The objective of the audit was to assess whether the requirements for materials handling, cranes and lifting on Martin Linge B were being met during the conversion of and operational preparations for the facility.
The safety body gave Equinor a deadline of 3 September 2018 to report on how the non-conformities will be addressed.
MT Hanne Knutsen has been converted to a floating storage and offloading unit (FSO) and named Martin Linge B. Norwegian oil major Equinor is leasing Martin Linge B from Knutsen NYK Offshore Tankers AS (KNOT), which is also operating the facility.
The Martin Linge field in the North Sea is an oil and gas discovery that was made in 1975. The field is located 42 km west of Oseberg, at a water depth of 115 metres. Equinor (then Statoil) became the operator of the Martin Linge field and Garantiana discovery in a transaction completed on 19 March 2018.
New wells drilled in the following years confirmed that this was a complex, high-pressure area, consisting of an oil reservoir at 2,000 metres depth and a sizeable gas reservoir at 4000 metres depth.
At peak some 1,500 to 2,000 individuals in rotation will be occupied in the hook up and completion phase. The production is estimated to begin in 2019.
