* Maintenance backlog on safety-critical systems
* Operators delay safety checks to boost production
* Fail-safe devices on Elgin may have been faulty
By Oleg Vukmanovic
ABERDEEN, Scotland, April 5 (Reuters) – The UK North Sea’s
dwindling oil and gas reserves are pushing companies to tap
unstable reservoirs at high pressure and extreme heat, while
safety checks and maintenance are behind schedule, a North Sea
rig auditor who works for the industry told Reuters.
French oil major Total is battling to stem a
12-day gas leak at its North Sea Elgin platform after a series
of technical failures that industry sources say reflect wider
lapses across Britain’s offshore industry.
The auditor, an engineer and a union official said a range
of measures designed to prevent a leak must have failed on
Elgin, allowing gas to escape to the surface.
Total did not return requests for comment on issues raised
by this report.
“There is a worrying backlog of maintenance on
safety-critical equipment, including release valves, pipelines
and sub-sea fail-safe devices,” said the auditor, an oil
industry professional with more than a decade’s experience of
safety systems and procedures.
“My experience in this region is that if you scratch beneath
the surface, things get quite scary quite quickly,” he said.
He said some North Sea rigs designed in the 1960s and 1970s
were “falling to pieces” after exceeding their production
lifespans, while more modern platforms were lagging well behind
scheduled maintenance programmes.
Another source at a major oil company said safety still
ranked high, but low gas prices – at about half their levels
before the 2008 financial crisis – forced operators to weigh
‘loss of life risks against loss of production risks.’
With rising operating costs and lower revenues, companies
have put pressure on facilities to produce more fuel in order to
break even, which means reducing the number of safety checks
that could interrupt production.
The UK’s offshore regulator, the Health and Safety
Executive, has previously identified maintenance backlogs in
successive asset integrity reviews, noting that maintenance on
safety-critical equipment was especially poor.
“In some companies the decline in integrity performance that
started following the low oil price has not been effectively
addressed, and there appears to be an acceptance of this,
knowing that the assets are likely to be sold,” it said in 2009.
High-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) reservoirs, like the
one feeding the Elgin platform, exacerbate matters because they
combine higher costs to drill and maintain with “the inherent
risks associated with them,” the auditor said.
“I have seen things on some platforms that HSE would be
extremely unhappy about,” he said.
Maintenance on systems critical to safe-guarding life in
some cases has been pushed back by up to a year, he said.
An engineer who designs rig equipment said the entire
industry was “swamped by work” so maintenance backlogs could
also be down to limited resources as companies providing piping
and valves were working flat out to meet demand.
Industry body Oil & Gas UK’s health and safety director,
Robert Paterson, said: “All safety-critical systems on every
installation are subject to regular and rigorous inspections.
Offshore safety isn’t getting worse, it’s continually getting
better.
“Over the last 15 years … we’ve seen a 70 per cent
reduction in major and significant hydrocarbon releases (and) a
66 per cent reduction in all types of injury.”
A spokesman for Royal Dutch Shell, which also operates in
the UK North Sea said: “Asset integrity is a high priority for
Shell. In 2011, we invested around $600 million in our North Sea
assets, including maintenance. We strive to operate all our
assets, regardless of age or location, in a way that meets or
exceeds both our global internal standards and relevant legal
and regulatory requirements. We are confident that the
maintenance plans for our North Sea assets are robust.”
BP, another major North Sea operator, did not comment.
AGEING EQUIPMENT
One offshore worker speaking from a helicopter departure
lounge prior to a three-week stint on a North Sea gas
installation said maintenance backlogs were a common problem
that could take years to clear.
“I make repairs in designated safety areas … and the way
things are, I’ll have a job in the North Sea for the rest of my
life,” he said.
“There is a wide issue with the age of the platforms,” said
Oberon Houston, Petroleum Engineering Manager, with experience
of working on a number of rigs in the North Sea.
“People tend to think, ‘The platform only has 4-5 years left
in it, so we don’t do anything to it’, but oil prices rise, or
you find more oil, and suddenly you’re going for another 12, 15
years or more,” he added.
Dick West, Operations Director of North Sea operator Xcite
Energy, said ageing facilities did, however, need to
prove their safety to have their life extended, and the HSE had
been demanding more detail in the last 18 months.
The British safety regulator said there were about 70 major
or significant hydrocarbon releases a year in the British part
of the North Sea – “significant” meaning it could cause multiple
fatalities and escalate further. Norway had just eight in 2010.
“It is lack of assessing risk, lack of control of the work,
people cutting in the wrong pipework, people doing a shoddy job,
making or breaking pipework, corrosion that should have been
anticipated and monitored,” Steve Walker, head of the offshore
safety division at UK Health and Safety, told Reuters in
October.
“SWISS-CHEESE” SAFETY MEASURES
Total’s Elgin leak occurred above the water line on the rig
itself, the auditor noted.
“There are all kinds of safety mechanisms that should kick
in and prevent a leak at that height … Quite clearly these
fail-safes did not work,” he said.
Total repeatedly reassured workers that safety systems would
prevent a leak up to and including a few hours before the
blowout that triggered the arrival of Royal Air Force and
Norwegian helicopter evacuation teams, according to Jake Molloy,
head of the RMT trade union’s offshore arm.
Workers had raised safety concerns beginning more than a
month before the incident, he said.
The offshore industry’s safety regime operates on what is
known as the “Swiss-cheese model”, building in layers of
individually incomplete safety precautions that together should
stop an emergency developing.
“But all that depends on the number of layers of barriers
and the rigour with which they are maintained,” the source from
an oil major said.
The extreme environment in HPHT reservoirs – which are
increasingly common as maturing fields become less productive –
raises the risks.
Total itself has identified such risks based on problems
encountered during production.
In research papers, it has described how, as a well goes
through gas pockets under different levels of high pressure, gas
could leak inside the well and rise to the surface.
“It was realised that conventionally cemented casings was
unlikely to hold this gas back during the production lifecycle
of the wells,” it said in a 2005 paper.
That year a barrier in a well drilled in the West Franklin
field failed, leading to an increase in gas pressure and the
risk of gas from the reservoir escaping to the platform.
In the incident, described in a 2007 paper whose authors
included Total engineers, the problem was difficult to fix
because it required a “complex well-kill operation to resolve”.
This is what Total now plans for the faulty Elgin well.
“From a production point of view, life extension of ageing
assets is the name of the game. Operators are squeezing the last
drop from the North Sea … so when production from normal wells
dries up, they’ve got the HTHP to bring out of their back
pocket,” the auditor said.
Asked if it was investigating the possibility of equipment
failures at Total’s Elgin rig, the HSE said: “It will not be
legally appropriate for HSE as the regulatory authority to
respond, as the answers given may prejudice the investigation or
subsequent enforcement.”
(Additional reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo and Tom Bergin
in London; Editing by Will Waterman)
