Svein Thorsen, Statoil; and Doug Woodbridge, S3 ID
Statoil’s Statfjord Field is located about 80 mi off the coast of Norway. Statfjord is a significant trans-median oil and gas field, meaning that it crosses the boundary between the Norwegian and UK sectors of the North Sea, with about 15% of the field being located in UK Continental Shelf waters. One of the largest fields in this sector, at its peak production Statfjord exceeded 700,000 bpd, the oil being loaded offshore and taken direct to refineries and the gas transported via the Statpipe pipeline to mainland Norway and via Brent Field to the UK.
Statfjord Field is produced by three Condeep concrete production platforms, Statfjord A, B and C. Each platform has about 250,000 tonnes of concrete and about 40,000 tonnes of topside processing, with overall accommodation facilities for more than 1,000 crew members. With such a substantial offshore infrastructure, and with the safety and welfare of personnel in mind, Statoil decided in 2006 that it needed an electronic personnel registration system (PRS) to improve emergency preparedness across Statfjord Field.
EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS
Statoil was seeking a better way to register personnel in an evacuation and to keep its emergency preparedness management team fully updated about the evacuation status in real time. Conventional muster techniques could be used to fulfill Norwegian safety regulations, which require that all personnel be accounted for within 20 min., but meeting this standard could be challenging in a crisis.
Statoil wanted to remove the risk of human error during mustering, which could compromise safety in the event of a crisis, through failure to properly account for personnel. The objective was that improved personnel registration would allow the search for missing personnel to take place more quickly and, at the same time, prevent unnecessary deployment of rescue teams into a danger zone to find those incorrectly marked as missing.
An electronic PRS was preferred because it is not subject to human error under stress, and because reliable personnel counts could be obtained in real time. Another anticipated benefit of an electronic PRS was that it could significantly reduce time, and thus costs, associated with returning a platform to production following an emergency muster.
Another disadvantage of manual paper-based mustering techniques is the
time spent administering them and generating post-muster reports. A PRS generates time savings by storing a full history and creating reports automatically.
ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION
The operator selected a PRS supplied by S3 ID, which automatically registers personnel during a platform muster using individual radio frequency identification (RFID) active transponder tags that are allocated to all personnel. The transponder is worn at all times to ensure that personnel arriving at their designated muster station are detected as they pass the PRS muster station antennas.
The primary transponder type used at Statfjord Field is worn on the wrist and resembles a watch in its size and shape. However, a number of credit card-type tags are also available for crew members who are unable to wear the wrist transponder.
Under normal operation, crew members are issued a transponder at the onshore heliport. The PRS logs the transponder’s unique ID code to the individual. When a muster is initiated on a platform, the crew member is registered by the PRS whenever the transponder is detected at the designated muster station.
The PRS uses PC servers arranged in a dual-redundant hardware configuration that maintains a database record of all muster activities for the platform. The mustering data is gathered from transponder readers located at the muster stations.
A number of PRS operator workstations, located on the platforms’ local area networks and at the onshore heliport, have access to PRS information screens. An overview screen shows a summary of an active muster, and a number of reports can be generated with current or historical data. In the event of an incident, individual muster lists or incident duties will be available via the PRS operator screen and in hardcopy reports.
The heliport onshore has PRS workstation PCs fitted with PRS transponder tag allocators. This enables offshore personnel to be issued a transponder and registered to the PRS on their arrival at the heliport. On return to the onshore heliport, the system deregisters each individual, and his or her tag is handed in. A workstation PC and backup tag allocation system are also provided in the sky lobby of each installation to enable transponder allocation when required. The systems provide definitive location awareness of personnel from point of departure to personnel on board, and include provision of 3,200 active transponder tags, which are certified as intrinsically safe for use in hazardous areas.
The S3 ID PRS has been operational across Statfjord as part of Statoil’s emergency preparedness system for more than three years. 
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THE AUTHORS
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Svein Thorsen is a Principal Engineer at Statoil and is involved in telecommunication across the Statfjord A, B and C production platforms. He was involved in the implementation of the electronic PRS from its initial stages through installation and commissioning. Mr. Thorsen has extensive experience in the oil and gas sector, working in both onshore and offshore facilities.
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Doug Woodbridge is Head of Group Sales and Marketing at S3 ID. In addition to marketing the company’s range of patented electronic location awareness, persons-on-board, mustering, security and personnel logistics technologies, Mr. Woodbridge promotes application expertise that provides clients with expert consultancy and engineering services.
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