Major North Sea pipe shuts for three weeks to repair crack

Householders will not notice difference but closedown will hit customers

Repairs to the Forties pipeline, which carries 40% of North Sea oil and gas, could take up to three weeks, operators have said.

The pipeline has been shut to repair a crack which was discovered last week during a routine inspection south of Aberdeen.

Operators Ineos said the repair would be more complicated than first thought as the crack was propagating.

They said the impact for customers would be very significant but the domestic market was not likely to be much affected.

Andrew Gardner, chief executive of the Ineos Forties Pipeline System, said workers found a hairline crack in the pipe last Wednesday which then started to grow, despite efforts to repair it.

He told BBC Good Morning Scotland: “Over the weekend we noticed the crack starting to develop and grow further.

“It was about 10cm and it grew another couple of centimetres.

“We reduced the pressure further and then at that point the crack still grew, so the only safe option was to take the system down so we could be convinced that we could stop the growth of the crack and get in and do a proper permanent repair.

“It was a straightforward process when the crack was not moving. Now that the crack is propagating we need to be very careful that whatever repair isn’t just masking a crack underneath.

“So it will probably be a little bit more complicated than what we thought it was going to be, hence why we need to take the system down.”

Asked how long the system was likely to be down he said: “We’re estimating just now between two and three weeks.

“Overnight, the system has come down.

“We’ve been making it safe and now we need to get in and inspect further and the results of that inspection now that the system is safe will obviously determine the repair mechanism.”

Some local residents have been placed in temporary accommodation while the repairs take place.

Ineos only recently bought the pipeline, which takes mainly oil to the company’s refinery at Grangemouth.

Mr Gardner said the impact of the shutdown would be “very significant” for Ineos customers the North Sea producers, who are now not producing, and apologised to them.

He said: “I think in terms of the end producers... most of that oil is then exported, so I think the UK domestic impact will not be great but it’s certainly a big impact for our customers.”

It will probably be a little bit more complicated than we thought it was going to be

While a relatively short shut-in will be manageable for most, the longer the problem persists the more economic damage will be done

Grangemouth, we have a problem. That’s how I imagine news of the discovery of a hairline crack in the Forties pipeline was communicated back to owner INEOS’s main UK operating base on the Forth.

Like Nasa when it received its famous call from pilot Jack Swigert aboard the crippled Apollo 13, I suspect the call was taken with a minimum of fuss.

INEOS is too big and experienced an organisation to go into panic mode but the implications of a hairline crack to Forties would have been immediately clear to its technicians.

For the Forties pipeline links more than 80 North Sea fields and it exports almost 40% of the oil and gas recovered from the UK Continental Shelf.

As such, it is one of the key pieces of industrial infrastructure in Scotland and its smooth operation is vital.

A small crack was first detected near Netherley, south of Aberdeen, during a routine inspection last week.

INEOS reduced pressure in the system in order to carry out a full assessment but their inspections found the situation had deteriorated with the crack having extended.

That discovery has led to a controlled shutdown of the pipeline while a repair method is identified and implemented.

INEOS expects the process to take weeks rather than days – and that’s the nub of this issue.

It is not the crack itself (unless, God forbid, the situation should somehow worsen), it is the knock-on impact of Forties being out of action that is the real cause for concern.

BP, Shell and Apache have been forced to stop production from their North Sea hubs that use Forties.

While a relatively short shut-in will be manageable for most, the longer the problem persists the more economic damage will be done.

For INEOS, a shutdown of Forties is a double blow as a significant portion of the oil retrieved through the pipeline feeds its Grangemouth refinery, where 80% of Scotland’s fuel is produced.

Time is therefore of the essence for all parties.

Like at Nasa in 1970, INEOS engineers will need to come up with a remedy quickly to minimise the outage’s impact on the Scottish and UK economy.

Grangemouth, we have a solution is a call we all want to hear.

The Forties pipeline carries 40% of North Sea oil and gas but will be shut for up to three weeks after a crack was spotted moving along it.

The site of the crack in the Forties pipeline at Netherley.