Production was shut down due to a fire alarm on Statoil’s Heimdal gas platform in the North Sea on Friday morning, Norwegian press reported.
The platform’s fire safety system indicated a fire in the main generator at 1 am, halting production and triggering a procedure for the evacuation of 67 workers on board, Norway’s daily Stavanger Aftenblad reported.
The Heimdal platform’s capacity averages some 15-20% of Norway’s total gas output, which supplies about a third of the EU’s annual gas imports.
This is the latest in a series of recent incidents which have led the country’s Petroleum Safety Authority to demand that Statoil investigate whether its attempts to cut costs were compromising safety. In October, the company posted USD 261 million in adjusted losses for Q3 and pledged to axe its capex by an additional USD 1 billion.
