PSA Carries Audit of Teekay’s Design of FPSO Knarr

From 26-28 September and 21-25 October 2011, the PSA carried out an audit of Teekay Petrojarl’s (TKPJ’s) design of FPSO Knarr. The audit included the working environment and material handling disciplines.

 Background

The Knarr field is located in the northern part of the North Sea, about 120 kilometres west of Florø. The field will be developed with seabed facilities tied in to a floating production facility (FPSO).

BG Norge is the operator of Knarr, and has engaged TKPJ for building and operation of an FPSO – FPSO Knarr.

TKPJ will own and operate the facility, which requires an application for an Acknowledgement of Compliance (AoC) to the PSA.

TKPJ owns and operates several FPSOs both on the Norwegian shelf and in foreign waters. However, the construction of FPSO Knarr is the first FPSO facility which TKPJ has built for the Norwegian shelf since the construction of Petrojarl 1 in the mid-1980s.

The audit is connected to the future AoC application and is entirely directed at TKPJ as an owner and user of the facility.

 Objective

The objective of the audit has been to supervise that TKPJ, during construction of the Knarr FPSO, safeguards the regulatory requirements within the areas included under this audit activity.

The company’s own governing documents and studies/analyses were used as a basis during the verifications.

 Results

The activity uncovered some nonconformities in relation to the regulations. These were mainly related to the following factors:

Inadequate requirement basis for certain working environment conditions (emergency lighting, HVAC capacity and information presentation on screens in the control room)

Inadequate expertise and inadequate resources in the project for follow-up of material handling and working environment conditions

Inadequate overview of gap between working environment requirements incorporated in the contract with SHI and the regulatory minimum requirements, as well as a lack of concrete plans for how TKPJ will ensure chosen design solutions and package deliveries comply with regulatory requirements.

Inadequate document control and establishment of uniform philosophies across the project’s deliveries

Inadequate overview of nonconformities and systems to identify nonconformities from the regulatory requirements

The plan was to place the crane cradles for the offshore cranes in a position that would prevent free visibility to the loading areas

Inadequate facilitation for material handling between process and weather decks

Factors with a potential for improvements were also observed.

[mappress]
Offshore Nieuws Staff  , December,20.  2011