Italy's Eni acknowledged that its staff needed a better grasp of the potential risks at its Goliat Field in Norway's Arctic waters more than a month before a power failure occurred that halted production.
The outage on Aug. 26 forced a partial evacuation of the platform in the Barents Sea and prompted Norwegian authorities to review Eni's work at the 100,000 barrel per day field that only started production in March.
It was the latest in a series of incidents at the field. On June 25, one person was hurt while cleaning up after an unloading operation, according to a report published by the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA) two days afterward.
Following the June incident, Philip Hemmens, the head of Eni's Norwegian subsidiary, wrote to the PSA saying that following an investigation into the accident, the company recognized health and safety management needed to be improved.
"The main underlying cause is insufficient risk understanding at all levels of the organization [onshore and offshore]," said the July 12 letter which was obtained by Reuters on Sept. 13 under Norway's freedom of information rules.
"Eni is taking the lessons learned from the accident very seriously and will follow up the implementation," Hemmens wrote.
Eni was not immediately available for comment on Sept. 13.
Last week, Norwegian Labour Minister Anniken Hauglie said Eni could only resume production at Goliat after it ensures operational safety.
Eni told the PSA on Sept. 9 it would not resume production until workers and other interested parties had agreed on safety measures, which could take a couple of weeks.
The company asked labor unions to nominate representatives to five committees that are going to tackle various issues in a bid to improve the safety of operating Goliat
On Sept. 12, Industri Energi, the biggest union in Norway's oil sector, said it had a "positive" meeting with Eni management a day earlier.
"We expect the situation to improve and to see results," Martha Skjaeveland, a union representative at Eni Norway, said in a statement.
Eni owns 65% of Goliat while Norway's Statoil ASA (NYSE: STO) owns 35%.
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