Christmas on DraugenLeak from Draugen

Production shut down

person by Trude Meland, Norwegian Petroleum Museum
Storms with wind speeds well above hurricane force struck the Halten Bank in January 2005. In itself, this weather posed no threat to either platform or production on Draugen.
— From a storm in 2013. Photo: A/S Norske Shell/Norwegian Petroleum Museum
© Norsk Oljemuseum

Before it began, however, damage had been caused to the hose used to transfer oil from Draugen’s loading buoy to shuttle tankers for shipment to land. Although a new loading hose was to hand and personnel were in place, the replacement could not be carried out until wind and waves had calmed down.

This meant in turn that oil could not be transferred to tankers. The platform’s storage cells filled up, and production had to be suspended because no more space was available.[REMOVE]Fotnote: Adresseavisen, 12 January 2005, “Oljestopp på Draugen”.

The wind was gusting up to 85 knots – which is pretty high when a hurricane starts at 65. Draugen was shut down for more than a week. January 2005 was characterised by a lot of bad weather, starting with the Gudrun cyclone over southern Norway on 8-9 January.

Then the Hårek storm hit the northern coast from Nord-Trøndelag to the Lofoten islands on 10 January, and Inga struck further south from Egersund to Kristiansund on 11-12 January.

The extreme wind speeds created significant wave heights – the mean measurement (from trough to crest) of the highest third of the waves – of up to 10 metres. Individual waves can be up to twice as high.[REMOVE]Fotnote: Iden, K, Isaksen, K, Kristiansen, S and Szewczyk-Bartnicka, H (2006). Været i Norge Klimatologisk månedsoversikt Året 2005. Norwegian Meteorological Institute (No 13/2005 ISSN 1503-8017 KLIMA Oslo, 24 January 2006). Downloaded from https://www.met.no/publikasjoner/met-info/met-info-2005.

Christmas on DraugenLeak from Draugen
Published August 8, 2018   •   Updated October 18, 2018
© Norsk Oljemuseum
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