Taking action to improve

The FINANCIAL — Broad efforts have been made to identify the direct and underlying causes of the Gullfaks C well control event on 19 May 2010.

Operator Statoil has responded today to the most recent post-incident orders from the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway .

As required by the PSA, risk assessment and work processes in the drilling and well area at Statoil have been evaluated and improved.

This has contributed to safer drilling processes and closer collaboration between the group’s operational teams and technical specialists.Work has also been carried out to identify improvement areas in the group which can help to ensure better learning from incidents.   

The International Research Institute of Stavanger has conducted an external study into why measures adopted after earlier incidents with similar causes have failed to produce the desired effect on Gullfaks.

Union-management action teams have also worked in parallel on the same issue to assess whether the main findings of this work are also valid for other parts of the organisation.