The audit was conducted from 17 to 25 November 2021.

  • Wintershall Dea is the operator of the Vega field
  • Odfjell Drilling is the drilling contractor and operates the Deepsea Aberdeen mobile facility

Objective

The objective of the audit was to verify that Wintershall Dea and Odfjell Drilling, along with their suppliers, comply with the regulatory requirements for the management of planning, risk assessment and execution of drilling and well operations on the Vega field using Deepsea Aberdeen.

Result

Our audit identified three non-conformities and three improvement points.

The non-conformities included (the company responsible is shown in parentheses):

  • Establishment and follow-up of competence requirements within well control (Wintershall Dea)
  • Marking of safety-critical equipment (Odfjell Drilling)
  • Bridging document for well control procedures (Wintershall Dea and Odfjell Drilling)

The improvement points included:

  • Overview of blowout preventer (BOP) shearing capacity (Odfjell Drilling)
  • Reliability requirements for BOP function (Odfjell Drilling)
  • Marking (Odfjell Drilling)

Follow-up of non-conformities

During the audit, we also investigated how Odfjell Drilling has addressed certain previously identified non-conformities.

In January and February 2021, we carried out an audit of Odfjell Drilling within the domains of drilling and well technology and maintenance management in respect of Deepsea Aberdeen

We found that the company had not addressed the following non-conformities in line with their feedback to us:

  • Non-conformity concerning “Missing and inadequate marking”, chapter 5.1.3 
  • Non-conformity concerning “Deficiencies in updating of and compliance with procedures”, chapter 5.1.2

What happens now?

We have asked Wintershall Dea and Odfjell Drilling to report by 22 March 2022 on how the non-conformities will be addressed and for their assessment of the improvement points observed.