The audit was conducted from 16 to 18 January 2019. In the audit, we looked at how Equinor had followed up non-conformities in the management of working environment risk and employee participation. These non-conformities are ones that we identified in an audit of the Mongstad facility in June 2017.

Objective 

The objective of the audit was to verify that Equinor has corrected the non-conformities we identified in 2017, as they undertook to do. 

Result

The audit in January 2019 showed that five of the nine regulatory breaches we identified in 2017 had not been rectified in accordance with the binding schedules that Equinor sent to us. One is still being processed.
 
This concerns the following non-conformities: 

  • Communication of working environment data to safety delegates
  • Non-conformity handling of working environment observations (in process)
  • Area noise requirements
  • Noise measures implemented
  • Noise exposure measurements
  • Benzene exposure

In addition, we now identified a new non-conformity. This concerns:

  • Deficient prioritisation and management follow-up of regulatory non-conformities within the working environment domain 

What happens now?

On the basis of our observations in the audit, we have issued the following order to Equinor:

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, Section 12 concerning planning and Section 14 concerning manning and competence, we order Equinor Mongstad to:

  1. Initiate measures to guarantee sufficient and necessary capacity to rectify the non-conformities presented in chapters 4.2.1 and 5.1.1 of the report and verify that the measures have been implemented.

A time-delimited schedule for complying with the order shall be sent to the PSA by 22 May 2019. The schedule shall describe how this work is to be performed and followed up and when the order will have been complied with. We are to be notified when the order has been carried out.