The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) has carried out an audit of Saipem focused on the management of the working environment and operations in the drilling areas on Scarabeo 8. The audit identified serious regulatory breaches and we have now issued the company with a an order.
- The audit was conducted from 19 to 26 January 2023.
- The notification of order was made on 22 March 2023.
- The order was issued on 17 April 2023.
Objective
The objective of the audit was to verify that Saipem's management of the working environment and operations in the drilling areas on Scarabeo 8 complied with the regulatory requirements. In addition, observations from previous audits within the working environment and drilling were followed up.
Result
The audit identified ten non-conformities. These comprised:
- Non-conformity handling
- Lack of assessment of different technical and organisational solutions to avoid harmful exposure and strain
- Management of the risk of musculoskeletal disorders
- Management of the psychosocial working environment
- Management of chemical health hazards
- Management of noise and hand/arm vibrations
- Personal protective equipment
- Employee participation
- Joint, local working environment committee (FS-AMU)
- Maintenance/systems
In addition, we observed two factors that we have chosen to categorise as improvement points. These concerned:
- Ventilation and indoor climate
- Functional testing of the blowout preventer (BOP)
Follow-up of previous non-conformities
During the audit, we also verified how Saipem has addressed certain previously identified non-conformities. We found that the following non-conformity had not been addressed in line with the company’s feedback of 23 September 2022 and 16 November 2022:
Non-conformity 5.1.3 concerning non-conformity handling from the report following the audit of barriers and maintenance management for electrical facilities, safety instrumented systems and drilling-related systems on Scarabeo 8 (23 June 2022).
Order
The audit of Saipem has identified serious breaches of the regulations and we have issued the company with the following order:
Pursuant to the Framework Regulations, section 69 concerning administrative decisions, with reference to the Management Regulations, section 6 concerning the management of health, safety and the environment, and section 22 concerning the handling of non-conformities, we order Saipem to:
Review the company's management system for the working environment, which is intended to safeguard competence, surveys, risk assessments, rectification of faults and deficiencies, and improvements. The work shall include an analysis of the underlying causes of identified deficiencies related to the management of the working environment within Saipem.
Implement necessary improvement measures systemically within Saipem based on the above review and analysis.
The deadline for complying with the order is 31 August 2023. We are to be notified when the order has been carried out.
A time-delimited schedule for complying with the order shall be sent to the PSA by 28 April 2023. The schedule shall describe how this work is to be performed and followed up.
