• Wednesday, 16 May, 2012

Inspectors board leak-hit Gannet

Out of action: Shell's Gannet Alpha remains shut-in after Monday's gas leak

Shell

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Rob Watts , Rob Watts , Rob Watts , Rob Watts

 10 February 2012 10:13 GMT

Safety inspectors are now on board Shell’s Gannet Alpha platform to investigate a gas leak that led to the evacuation of 48 non-essential workers on Monday.

The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) confirmed on Friday that inspectors flew out to the installation, 180 kilometres east of Aberdeen, on Thursday.

Gannet Alpha remains shut-in, Shell said. A total of 76 workers were on board at the time of the incident.

The field was the site of the UK’s worst oil spill in a decade last August when about 1300 barrels of crude leaked from a subsea flowline running from the Gannet F satellite field to Gannet Alpha.

As today’s print edition of Upstream reveals, a key audit of Shell’s safety management systems covering the Gannet pipelines was three years overdue at the time of last year’s oil spill.

The HSE has now served two Improvement Notices against the Anglo-Dutch supermajor for failures in documents and systems that contributed to that leak.

The warnings, however, do not represent a conclusion to the ongoing joint investigation by the UK’s regulatory authorities, whose findings will be used by Scotland’s public prosecutor in deciding whether to prosecute the company.

The investigation is expected to last until spring or summer, a spokesman for the Department of Energy & Climate Change said this week.

Monday’s unrelated gas leak was detected when workers saw a shimmer beneath the platform, an indication of natural gas.

Shell said reports of a sheen on the sea surface were found to be false after flyovers by spotter planes failed to find any evidence.

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