Statoil Warned over Troll Blowout

Norway’s independent safety regulator, the Petroleum Safety Authority (Ptil), said February 21 it has issued Statoil, as operator of the giant Troll field, with a safety compliance order. This follows Ptil's investigation of a blowout on October 15 2016 that occurred drilling of a production well on the field. 

The blowout lifted equipment six meters out of control, emitting large volumes of fluid and gas, displacing the 2.5 metric ton hydraulic slips and some two tons of other materials on the deck. Statoil failed to assess the risk of large quantities of gas being released, the cause of the incident, said Ptil. It took 11 days for Statoil to stabilise the well.

Nobody suffered physical injury, said Ptil, “but under slightly different circumstances it could have led to a major accident with the loss of several lives.” It said this was among “the most serious well control incidents on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) since Statoil’s Snorre A incident in 2004.”

Statoil must comply with the order by April 28 2017, which includes producing a plan including improvements to how Troll drilling is organised.     

Norway’s petroleum ministry in April 2016 gave its consent for the Troll gas production ceiling in the gas year starting October 1 2016 to be increased to 33bn m³, a 10% hike from the 30bn m³ over the preceding 12-month period, in what analysts saw as Oslo defending its European gas market share.

Troll in oil price reporting change

Troll is an oil producer, in addition to being Norway’s largest gas field. In unrelated news, oil price reporting service Platts said February 20 that it will include Troll oil as its latest addition to its Brent crude oil pricing basket from January 2018.

Dated Brent is a decades-old international benchmark, assessed by Platts but also rival services such as Argus and ICIS. Because production from the UK Brent-Ninian field system has dwindled over the past 15-20 years, all added the UK Forties, then Norwegian Oseberg and Ekofisk fields to create a more liquid “BFOE” North Sea crude oil assessment. Platts now says it will publish assessments for the January 2018 cash BFOE contract that include Troll from September 1 2017. Argus said that, as most Troll oil is not traded but instead refined in Statoil’s own Mongstad unit, the Platts initiative would have “little practical impact.”

Mark Smedley