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Forties outage caused by rock

The hairline pipeline leak was caused by the vibration of the pipeline next to a ‘sharp ridge’ of granite.

INEOS took over the facility from BP in October 2017 after purchasing it for £250 million. Less than a month later the crack was found and the entire pipeline was closed for over two weeks. INEOS is a global chemicals company that has a turnover over of approximately $40 billion annually.

Speaking to Reuters, Tom Crotty, director of INEOS said: “It was a failure that BP hadn’t seen before and we don’t expect to see again.”

“We knew that a robust maintenance programme would be essential.” Crotty added: “We will probably spend more on maintenance than the previous owners, reflecting the fact that this is an older asset.”

The pipeline handles 450,000 barrels of oil per day from oil fields in the North Sea. The pipeline is also the primary supply for the Brent benchmark, used for trading oil in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

See the Reuters report here.





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