Norwegian N.Sea Oil Platform Evacuated - Danger Of Blow-out

Because of an immidiate danger of gas-explosion they started evacuation of the norwegian North Sea platform "Snorre A" about 2� hours ago. 141 people has been evacuated and there are still 75 people on the platform. They describe it as a serious situation and there is still leaking gas.

From: The Norway Post: North Sea platform evacuated Sunday evening

The oil production platform Snorre A on the Norwegian Shelf in the North Sea was Sunday evening in the process of being evacuated due to an unstable well.

It was unclear if there was a danger of a blow-out from the platform, which is operated by Statoil. However, gas was streaming up close to the platform.

The evacuation was carried out by several helicopters, one of them a large rescue helicopter from the Sola air/sea rescue center.

-In addition there are four vessels in standby around the platform, says duty officer at the air/sea rescue center, Terje Langaas.

While they were evacuating the platform they considered jumping into the sea if the evacuation process should take too long. The weather were described as "good" but the water must be cold...

Related news sources:
Aftenposten: Gass lekker ut, plattform evakuert(In norwegian...)
TV2: Evakuerer oljeplattform (In norwegian...)
NRK: Oljeplattform evakuert (In norwegian...)
TV2: Dramatisk gasslekkasje p� Snorre A (In norwegian...)
Haugesunds Avis: Frykter utbl�sning (In norwegian...)
Bergens Tidende: Kystverket i beredskap (In norwegian...)
VIRGILIO News: Norvegia: evacuata piattaforma petrolifera off shore (In italian...)
Dagens Nyheter: 141 oljeplattformarbetare evakuerade (In swedish...)
�ltimo Segundo - Escape de g�s d� preju�zo de 130 mil b-d � plataforma de petr�leo no Mar do Norte (From Brazil...)
La Libert�: Evacuation d'une plateforme p�troli�re en mer du Nord (Swiss...)
Keskipohjanmaa.net: Norjalaisen porauslautan miehist�� evakuoitiin (finnito...)

Yahoo! News - Norwegian North Sea oil platform being evacuated after gas leak
Yahoo! India News - Norwegian North Sea oil platform being evacuated after gas leak


[edit on 2004/11/28 by Hellmutt]

easy prophecy.




www.statoil.com...
Norway - from the article's link :
A gas leak in a well on Statoil�s Snorre A platform in the North Sea around 19.00 on Sunday 28 November prompted the evacuation of ... 181 of Snorre A�s 216 crew.

UK, from news.bbc.co.uk... :

More than 40 workers remain on a North Sea oil platform from which 139 people were evacuated following a gas leak.


Unprecedented, since both platforms have strategic locations in the UK and Norway oil fields.

Snorre A impacts the world output.

Notice
- how statoil's announcement discloses that Snorre A output declined 40% in one year, contradicting official forecasts from last year
- how the UK incident discloses that 179 people are required to operate a platform that produces only about 14,000 bpd.

[edit on 28-11-2004 by MattMarriott]

The appearance of these leaks are all but a surprise for the people that are aware of the truth :the North Sea oil is moribund.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Well, even if the oil is still abundant, it is nice to find pockets of gases too. In Norway we are able of make use of it, eventhough for a very long time, it was just burnt up as waste.

Mo' $, � & � for the State of Norway (-less to the people!)

Latest news from Norway say they still don�t have controll with the well. Gas were leaking for more than 12 hours. The gasleak has been stopped, but they have no control over the well itself. There are currently 36 people on the platform. Those must be brave I guess, being on a platform which might explode at any time...

Aftenposten: Enn� ikke kontroll med Snorre A-br�nnen (In norwegian...)

DN: Snorre-plattformen kunne sunket (In norwegian...)

They say that the biggest risk now is not explosion but that the platform might sink.

did they get everyone off the platform -- or were the 36 that were left there to try to maintain things?

Also is this the platform they made inland and towed out to the site or was that another one? I remember seeing a Discovery Channel program on that.

The 36 were there to secure the well. I don�t know if they�re still there. Latest reports about the platform is that all production is halted and it might take a long time before they get it started again.



Norwegian link posted 17 minutes ago:
www.hegnar.no...




[edit on 2004/12/2 by Hellmutt]

They say they will start her up again this week. "Any time within a couple of days", whatever that means... They say production will be set back to normal again just after New Years Eve. That�s around 200 000 barrels a day. So close they were to loose the whole platform to Neptun...

They haven´t started up yet. They were not allowed by the authorities to enter "Phase 2" in the startup-process. And the internal report from Statoil (leaked to the press today) show that they made a very dangerous mistake on that day when it all started. While there was a gas-leak under the platform they let a big flame burn for 5 hours. This could easily have caused an uncontrollable fire which could have consumed the whole rig.

Another norwegian rig was just evacuated, "Veslefrikk". The 144 man crew were sent to the lifeboats after a gas-alarm. The alarm has now been called off but the gas-production is still down. Maybe the seafloor gets "unstable" when they take out all that gas and oil...?

Not again?!?

Another rig was almost evacuated about 3 hours ago. The rig "Gullfaks A" had a gas-leak and they sent rescue-choppers out there and the crew (180 people) were ready to jump into their lifeboats. The gas-leak is now "under control" and the choppers have turned around and aborted their mission. This is NOT normal. They don´t have situations like this all the time (well, now they do apparently) ...

What the hell?
3 rigs in like what 25 odd days?
WTF is going on?

Another norwegian oil rig closed production last night after a gas-alarm. Most of the crew was evacuated and jumped into the lifeboats. The gas leak was stopped and the situation is now under control. "Oseberg C" is the name of this oil-platform. It has a crew of 68 and it normally produces 70.000 barrels of oil per day. They say they still don´t know the cause of last nights incident.


EDIT: found an english link...
Gas leak stops production at Oseberg C

"Monday morning it was still uncertain when production would be resumed."

[edit on 2005/4/18 by Hellmutt]