Gas leaks were reported at Equinor's Sleipner offshore field on Monday, leading to the shutdown of parts of the gas field located in the North Sea, offshore Norway.
According to Equinor, on Monday morning, gas leaked in a contained area related to a turbine on the Sleipner A platform and "the incident was quickly clarified."
Then, during the process of resuming production and depressurization, an additional gas leak occurred on the Sleipner R riser platform late Monday night.
"Personnel on board mustered according to the procedure in both situations, but they were demobilized shortly afterward. No personnel were injured in any of the incidents. Work is ongoing to safely resume normal operation," Equinor said.
"The authorities have been notified and the incidents will be further investigated to find the causal relation," Equinor added.
The Sleipner area covers the gas and condensate fields Sleipner Øst, Gungne and Sleipner Vest. The Sleipner installations are also processing hydrocarbons from the tie-in fields Sigyn, Volve, Gudrun and from 2017 also rich gas from Gina Krog.
Sleipner consists of the following installations: Sleipner A - Processing, drilling and Living quarter platform; Sleipner R - Riser platform for gas export and condensate export; Sleipner T - Processing and CO2 removal platform; Sleipner B - Unmanned production platform.
Sleipner T and Sleipner R are both connected permanently with a bridge to Sleipner A platform.
Sleipner B is unmanned and is periodically operated by operations and maintenance personnel transferred from Sleipner A in helicopter.
Sleipner has since 1996 performed removal of CO2 from produced gas, and injected and stored more than 19 million tonnes of CO2 in the Utsira formation (by end of 2020).
