Incidents : Investigation of person injuries on the ” Equinor’s Statfjord B” in Norwegian North Sea.

The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway has decided to investigate an incident involving personal injuries that occurred on the Equinor’s Statfjord B facility in The Norwegian North Sea.  

Two offshore workers were exposed to smoke and had to be airlifted to the hospital for medical treatment.  

According to PSA, the incident is regarded as serious, prompting it to launch an investigation.   

A team of regulatory specialists is now probing into it, to identify the causes of the incident and possible lessons to be learnt, and to share this information with the industry.  

While conducting the investigation, the PSA will :

• carefully review the course of events
• uncover and describe the actual and potential consequences of the incident
• identify direct and underlying causes
• apply necessary enforcement powers to correct possible regulatory breaches
• make public its findings
• contribute to experience transfer to and learning by other players in the petroleum sector.   

Equinor is the operator for the Statfjord field with 44.34 % interests, Var Energi owns 21.37 %, Spirit Energy 19.76 % and Foreign owners 14.53 %.

About Statfjord Field

Statfjord was discovered by Mobil in 1974, and then Statoil, now Equinor, took over the operatorship on 1 January 1987. The field has been developed with the Statfjord A, B and C production platforms, which all have concrete gravity base structures incorporating storage cells.  

Since the deployment in the field, Statfjord FIeld met many incidents, which Includes :   

1. Fire in the shaft in Feb 1978
2. Helicopter crash in 1978
3. Fire on Polytraveller in August 1980
4. Lifeboat accident on LB200, July 1981
5. Helicopter crash during search operation, October 1990
6. Two killed in lifeboat drop, November 1992
7. Fire on Statfjord C 1996
8. Accident on Statfjord C 2005
9. Oil spill from Statfjord A 2007
10. Oil spill from Statfjord A – again 2008
11. Oil leakwhile loading from buoy to shuttle tanker on the North Sea Statfjord field, oil was observed on the sea surface in May 2019
12. Offshore Supply Vessel “PSV Sjøborg” collided into the Equinor’s “Statfjord A” platform, evacuating 276 POB, June 2019
13. Petroleum Safety Authority of Norway, PSA, initiated an investigation of an oil leak from the Statfjord A facilityon November 26, 2019

Press release