Posts Tagged ‘North Sea Platforms’

By John Donovan

It seems that Shell’s Gannet Alpha platform has had another close call.

On Monday workers were evacuated and production shut down after natural gas began seeping out from under the platform.

All of the ingredients for a disastrous explosion, of the kind that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, which almost brought about the demise of BP and the explosion on Shell Brent Bravo, resulting from Shell management (Malcolm Brinded) failing to take adequate action after a safety audit exposed a “Touch F*** All” safety culture and falsification of safety records.

Printed below is a comment from a Shell North Sea Platform Safety & Maintenance Expert on the recent oil spill near the Gannet Alpha Platform.

…another example of reactive maintenance regime, i.e. allowing, through neglect, equipment to fail and then reacting to the failure rather than, as the Safety Case for Gannet prescribes, preventing failure in the first instance by application of appropriate maintenance, inspection and monitoring.

(Expert in question may be available to the media for comment)

It seems that not much has changed. Production, profits and FAT CAT bonuses take priority over the safety of offshore workers.

RELATED ARTICLES

Hypocrisy of Shell CEO Peter Voser on BP Gulf of Mexico disaster

Oil and gas spills in North Sea every week, papers reveal

Collusion between Shell and HSE in Brent Bravo cover-up

Bill Campbell quoted in Final Report on BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Gas leak evacuates Shell oil rig

9 February 2012

Nearly 50 workers had to be evacuated from a North Sea oil platform after natural gas began seeping out beneath it, it has emerged.

Shell said staff were taken off the Gannet Alpha installation on Monday as a precaution. Production was shut down.

The oil giant said the incident was not linked to last August’s leak of more than 200 tonnes of oil from a pipeline beneath the Gannet Alpha.

The Health and Safety Executive is investigating.

The Gannet Alpha oil platform is 113 miles (180km) off Aberdeen.

SOURCE ARTICLE

• Gas work at leak pipe completed 04 NOVEMBER 2011
• ‘No more oil’ from leak pipeline 24 AUGUST 2011
• Shell defends safety after leak 22 AUGUST 2011
• Oil leak operation ‘successful’ 20 AUGUST 2011
• Shell’s oil spill: What happened 19 AUGUST 2011

The Press and Journal

Explosion warning over Shell platform

Saturday, September 17 2011

Front page lead story running on to page 2.

BY RYAN CRIGHTON

UNDER-PRESSURE oil giant Shell has been issued with an official safety warning over explosion risks at one of its ageing North Sea platforms.

The Health and Safety Executive is raising fears once again about the 35- year-old Brent Charlie platform, which has recorded 61 oil and gas leaks in a decade.

It emerged last night that the company has been served with an improvement notice over its failure to take action to identify “events” that could lead to a major accident, fire or explosion following a gas release.

Shell has been given until the end of the month to tackle the issues – which relate to one of the platform legs – or face further sanctions from the government body.

The company is already facing prosecution over the Gannet Alpha oil spill which spewed more than 200 tonnes of light crude into the North Sea last month.

A union boss said yesterday the company had “serious problems” at Brent Charlie that needed to be resolved before production resumed early next year.

All four platforms in the Brent field, 116 miles north-east of Shetland were shut down in January after a protective fender – thought to weigh about 25 tonnes – fell from the Brent Bravo installation.

Brent Alpha and Brent Bravo resumed production in the summer. Brent Delta is expected to follow soon, and Brent Charlie early next year.

Jake Molloy, of the RMT union in Aberdeen said: “The Charlie has only been producing sufficient gas to power the platform, but it still had another hydrocarbon release during the most minimal production – so there are serious problems which need resolved.”

Shell ‘has invested over £600m on North Sea upgrades’

WWF Scotland head of policy Dan Barlow said: “With yet another warning from the Health and Safety Executive, it seems that Shell is once again struggling to operate safely in the North Sea.

“Such notices give cause for concern about whether this company, with its ageing equipment, exposes us to a repeat of the recent Gannet Alpha oil spill.”

However, Shell hit back last night, saying it had invested  more than £600 million in recent years to    upgrade its North Sea facilities.

“Our overall performance has been improving,” a spokesman said.

“However, we are not satisfied with the number of hydrocarbon releases from our operations in 2009 and 2010, and we are committed to improve on our performance in this area.

“We have supported a recent proposal by Step Change in Safety – ‘which is a UK industry, HSE and trade union forum – to set an industry target, agreed in 2010, of halving hydrocarbon releases by 2013.

“We look to the great teams both offshore and onshore to achieve this important ambition.”

The company did not wish to put any of its bosses forward for interview yesterday.

Talisman has also been issued with a prohibition notice in recent weeks following four significant hydrocarbon releases from its Claymore platform. Work was halted on the platform – 100 miles north-east of Aberdeen – on August 16. However, no oil entered the sea.

Talisman UK senior vice-president Geoff Holmes said: “Any hydrocarbon release is unacceptable and our performance has clearly not met our own standards or those demanded by the HSE.

“Given the industry aim to cut hydrocarbon releases by 50% by 2012, they face an uphill battle.”

SOURCE ARTICLE

“A prohibition notice was served on Shell July 1 over hydrocarbon release issues on the Brent C platform. The rig is currently ‘shut in’…

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

LONDON (Dow Jones)–The U.K. offshore regulator issued Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA.LN) with two warnings in July for safety incidents at its aged Brent Charlie platform in the North Sea, the Health and Safety Executive website showed Wednesday.

One of the warnings is a more serious prohibition notice, which indicates there is an elevated risk of injury, while the other is an improvement notice, which gives an operator a period of time to correct a potential risk.

“A prohibition notice was served on Shell July 1 over hydrocarbon release issues on the Brent C platform. The rig is currently ‘shut in’, which means it has complied with the prohibition notice ordering activity to stop,” an HSE spokesperson told Dow Jones Newswires.

The 35-year old platform is located 145 kilometers north east of Unst. Production on the Brent field has continued to decline in recent years and many of the aging installations are due to be decomissioned in a few years. From 2000 to 2010, production on the whole Brent oil field dropped 91%.

The Brent field has four large platforms, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta.

A Shell spokesman wasn’t immediately able to detail the incident that resulted in the prohibition notice.

-By Alexis Flynn and James Herron, Dow Jones Newswires, +44 207 842 9471, alexis.flynn@dowjones.com

SOURCE

Mr Campbell insisted it is only a matter of time before there is another major tragedy in the North Sea. He said: “According to public domain data there were 85 gas releases and 443 dangerous occurrences last year. If you are getting 85 gas leaks that’s one and a half, or two, leaks a week. The probability of an undesirable event is very high.”

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

By John Donovan

The Sunday Express has today published an article under the headline: “Rusting rigs spark fears of oil tragedy” (above newspaper article) and “SCOTTISH OIL RIGS IN DIRE STRAITS” (online version).

The newspaper approached us for assistance and we were happy to supply extensive information, including the revealing letter we obtained from the Health & Safety Executive that is mentioned in the article.

We also put the Sunday Express journalist Paula Murray into contact with Bill Campbell, the retired HSE Group Auditor of Shell International to led the safety audit team on Shell North Sea platforms in 1999 which exposed a “Touch F*** All” maintenance culture with bodged repairs and falsified safety records. A more recent report (in 2008) by upstreamonline revealed that even the oil rig lifeboats were not seaworthy.

Shell management actions on North Sea employee safety appear to be completely different to its approach on the Pearl Gas-to-liquids project in Qatar, which apparently has an exemplary safety record. Is it because North Sea operations are viewed as rapidly becoming past history, whereas Pearl is seen as the money-spinning future?

If so, it is unfortunate and dangerous  for employees and contractors working offshore for Shell in the North Sea.

If, God forbid, there is a major disaster on a Shell North Sea facility, relevant Shell senior managers will find themselves in an unenviable position after ignoring so many alarm bells rang so loudly and incessantly by Bill Campbell since 1999.

The video taken last month shows an offshore worker hammering a hole through the floor of one of the platforms, sending chunks of the metal frame tumbling into the North Sea hundreds of feet below.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Express has also obtained a damning letter from the Health and Safety Executive following a summer inspection that found a 15,000-hour backlog in essential maintenance on one rig alone.

In it officials warn of the danger of some of the structure falling down “as the integrity worsens”.

Some rigs are being forced to use scaffolding to support failing hand railings and boards on the worst affected walkways to prevent workers falling through rusting metalwork.

Experts say that about half of the oil and gas platforms operating off the east coast of Scotland have already exceeded their “best before” dates, some by as much as 20 years, leading to fears of a major catastrophe.

Now the emergence of the footage from the undisclosed rig has sparked fresh demands for the safety of operations in the North Sea to be urgently reviewed.

Bill Campbell, former Group Auditor for Shell International and now a safety campaigner, said: “The useful life of any mechanical man-made structure can only be reached if maintained and inspected throughout its life.

“But the dominant failure characteristic for offshore installations is age-related. This footage testing the gratings was taken some weeks ago and shows what we already know.”

Mr Campbell added that he believed many rig workers are “blissfully unaware of the risks they are taking”.

More than 23 years have passed since 168 men died following an explosion on the Piper Alpha platform that also left 61 workers injured.

In the last 12 months there have been hundreds of dangerous incidents offshore with improvement notices handed out to various companies.

Last month Royal Dutch Shell battled an oil leak some 120 miles from Aberdeen in the biggest incident in a decade that saw more than 200 tonnes of oil spill into the sea.

The Sunday Express has obtained a report from the Health and Safety Executive of an inspection on Shell’s Brent C platform in July, which reveals “areas of the installation are suffering from severe corrosion”. Officials also point out that “redundant equipment did not appear to be inspected or  maintained and there is a risk that some aspects may pose a dropped object threat as integrity worsens”.

In a letter to Shell, Fraser Easton, HM Principal Inspector of Health and Safety, said he found a “significant maintenance backlog” exceeding 15,000 hours and demanded assurances that lives were not at risk.

Mr Campbell insisted it is only a matter of time before there is another major tragedy in the North Sea. He said: “According to public domain data there were 85 gas releases and 443 dangerous occurrences last year. If you are getting 85 gas leaks that’s one and a half, or two, leaks a week. The probability of an undesirable event is very high.”

But industry representative Oil & Gas UK, which organised a safety summit earlier this month, insisted the HSE’s most recent statistics show the number of major and significant gas leaks is already going down.

Robert Paterson, health and safety director, said: “The offshore industry invests significant funds, time and energy to ensure that its installations remain in a safe condition. All safety-critical systems on every North Sea platform are subject to regular and rigorous inspections.”

SOURCE ARTICLE

PDF Version of article

RELATED RECENT ARTICLES, MOST OF WHICH REFER TO BILL CAMPBELL

Leaked Shell Sigma3 document may hold clue to cause of Gannet oil spill: RoyalDutchShellPlc.com

Former Shell chairman James Smith to lead deregulation of UK oil and gas industry: Telegraph

UK Offshore Regulator Mulls Naming North Sea Spill Offenders: Dow Jones Newswires

Warning North Sea oil platforms could be near collapse: STV

Shell defends reporting of North Sea oil spill: The Guardian

Shell’s North Sea Reputation sunk by severe corrosion: Sunday Times/RoyalDutchShellPlc.com

Investigation into leak at Shell’s North Sea platform to get under way news: domain-b.com

No wonder bits are falling off the Shell Brent Platforms

Oil spill investigation begins as Shell plugs North Sea leak: The Guardian

Oil production in North Sea scrutinized: UPI

Halt Shell projects in North Sea, says WWF: The Press & Journal

Investigation gets under way as Shell plugs North Sea oil leak: Telegraph

Revealed: Shell’s poor safety record in the UK: Herald Scotland

Shell could face fines over Gannet oil spill: Telegraph

Shell’s Touch Fuck All culture on North Sea Platforms

Royal Dutch Shell has said it is working to contain an oil leak at its Gannet Alpha platform in the North Sea, but declined to specify the size of the leak.

• Reuters
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 August 2011 23.57 BST

Shell have confirmed a leak in a pipeline serving one of their North Sea platforms. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, August 12, 8:25 PM

MESSAGE FROM BILL CAMPBELL, RETIRED GROUP HSE AUDITOR, SHELL INTERNATIONAL

John

You may be interested in this, things are not getting better offshore and the figs for 2009/10 exclude the helicopter incident.

What should concerns offshore workers is that for example the operators or installations who are having the increase in gas releases are not highlighted in the HSE report.  It appears a fundamental weakness that you can find out how your local hospital is performing but not how the installation your friends or family are employed on is performing.  Despite pressure to provide specific data the HSE still produces general data masking from public scrutiny the worst offenders.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/2010/hse-offshorestats.htm

RELATED DAILY TELEGRAPH ARTICLE

North Sea oil and gas companies have been taken to task about their safety record after a sharp increase in accidents to workers and oil and gas leaks from offshore installations.

By Roland Gribben
Published: 6:30AM BST 24 Aug 2010

Steve Walker, head of the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) offshore division, has bluntly told companies that their health and safety record covering 27,000 workers is “simply not good enough.”

He said: “The industry has shown it can do better and it must do in future.”

Tom Botts, Executive Vice President, Shell Exploration & Production in Europe, said: “Active management of our assets is a key part of Shell’s portfolio-based strategy. At Shell, we are committed to focus on where we can best use our people, capital and technologies, for competitive long-term returns. On a global basis Shell remains committed to Europe and the North Sea as a core business area and holds a key strategic position in security of energy supply to the UK.”

Negotiations on the final contract are ongoing and execution of the final contract is subject to Project Final Investment Decision by Shell.