Norway Oil Sector Hit By Pipe-Fitting Quality Error

Photo: Olf.no

OSLO (Dow Jones)–Norway’s oil and gas industry has been hit by a worldwide pipeline quality scare after Italian company Tecninox said hundreds of thousands of duplex pipe fittings were heated at the wrong temperature during production.

A spokesman for the Norwegian oil industry association, or OLF, told Dow Jones Newswires that 20,000 of the affected fittings have been purchased by petroleum companies operating on the Norwegian continental shelf and that replacing them might require production shutdowns “for a short period of time.” It’s not yet clear when remedial work will take place.

OLF spokesman Kjetil Hjertvik said Norwegian operators are currently looking into their offshore operations to find out how many of the fittings are faulty. The Norwegian petroleum safety authority has given them until April 17 to carry out surveys. Up to 10,000 of the imported fittings have been installed offshore, but it isn’t clear how many of those are faulty, Hjertvik said. “Now it is safe to continue producing,” he said.

To read the entire article written by Elizabeth Cowley for Dow Jones Newswires, click here.