Equinor – Mongstad – Process Safety & Follow-up of Incidents

The Norwegian Ocean Industry Authority (Havtil) has carried out an audit of Equinor’s management of process safety and follow-up of incidents at Mongstad.

As of 1 January 2024, the Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority has a new name: the Norwegian Ocean Industry Authority (Havtil). The audit of Mongstad was conducted from 4 to 11 September 2023.

Objective
The objective of the audit was to assess how Equinor is ensuring regulatory compliance in respect of the prevention of major accidents by safeguarding process safety at the facility.

Result
During the audit, we detected six non-conformities, concerning:
• overpressure protection
• overfill protection
• overview of process safety functions
• non-conformity handling
• overpressure acceptance criteria
• organisation of information.

What happens now?
We have asked Equinor to report to us on how the non-conformities will be addressed. The reply deadline is set at 2 February 2024.

We have also asked Equinor to inform us when identified non-conformities in the company’s internal investigation following an H2S and LPG loss-of-containment incident in July 2021 have been corrected; see section 6.1 of the attached audit report.